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The sweet wind did gently kiss the trees and they did make no noise in such a night…

I’m kind of neutral about holding my breath. I’m told I did it occasionally as an infant, but apart from the games we played as children, I don’t remember that as being a part of my social repertoire. I was never very good at it, I suppose, and I hate snorkelling, so perhaps I’ve had a rather impoverished life so far.

Now that I think about it, though, I do remember the opposite challenge: a breathing game I played with some friends in Winnipeg in the 1950ies when the idea of brain-damage was just a warning in one of the lesser-thumbed pages of a Reader’s Digest magazine in our bathroom. I think the idea was to hyperventilate until you fell down dizzy on the grass, or something; none of my friends were terribly well-read in those halcyon days, and if memory serves, most of them faked their falls so they wouldn’t hurt themselves. Me? I faked dizziness as well as the fall; I was pretty happy with my brain, and I didn’t really want to mess with it. Childhood involves a lot of pretending.

But we all hold our breaths from time to time -even me if the occasion demands. Sometimes, on a day when there are no seats, a passenger beside me in the aisle of a busy bus is wearing an irritating perfume, or forgot to have his morning shower, and I have no option but to stop breathing. I try to be subtle about it, of course -no gasping or outward signs that I am about to faint or anything- civility demands politesse, especially when we are both trapped. Still, it is difficult to hold your breath for long without people noticing a colour change.

I suspect we usually practice breath holding in aliquots, however -small enough not to attract attention, but long enough to provide a little relief in a crowd filled with noxious odours, and unpleasant surprises. Of course that requires a precursory deep mouth-breath to make it work, and sometimes, if you’re fully immersed in a smelly group, you either have to take tiny compensatory breaths or end up gasping for oxygen on the floor among feet that are never particularly deodorized either.

In a different way, crowds remind me of trees in a forest; they breathe through the stomata on their leaves of course but in the opposite direction: we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen and other volatile chemicals that we associate with the enticing odour of a forest. Humans emit volatile chemicals too, of course, but they seldom remind me of trees. I carry little individually wrapped mints in my pocket to neutralize such occasions; I suppose I should also pass them out to those around me, but I don’t want to be punched, or anything.

Of course trees have the good sense to close their stomata should the need arise; and they are subtle about it. I mean, how would you know if the tree you stopped to admire is actually closing its stomata at you? As far as I am aware they do not gasp like us when they finally open them, and there is no colour change if they don’t; it’s yet another polite, but seldom remarked attempt by Nature to coexist with us, I think.

I live in the lower mainland of British Columbia, downwind from many of the forest fires burning in other parts of the province each summer; the resulting air is sometimes hazy and hard to breath, even down here. Trees are similarly affected it seems, and so they quietly close their stomata for protection. ‘When wildfire smoke travels long distances, the smoke cooks in sunlight and chemically changes. Mixing volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and sunlight will make ground-level ozone, which can cause  breathing problems in humans. It can also damage plants by degrading the leaf surface, oxidizing plant tissue and slowing photosynthesis.’ [i]

In fact, there are probably many things from wild fires that might cause the trees to close their stomata: ‘Smoke particles could coat the leaves, creating a layer that prevents the pores from opening. Smoke could also enter the leaves and clog their pores, keeping them sticky. Or the leaves could physically respond to the first signs of smoke and close their pores before they get the worst of it.’

I think we have a lot to learn from trees: only recently, as the years, not smoke, have clogged my own pores, I am I learning to stay comfortably in one spot for long periods without feeling, agoraphobic or anything. I suspect I would have made a good forest tree, although I’m not big on large groups and have studiously avoided mingling at parties that don’t offer quiet corners where I won’t be bothered. Perhaps I need counselling in sociability; perhaps that is what trees offer to those who venture among them. A lesson in proper stomataship might be in order, too.

Thoroughly encased in Age like many trees, I find I nap a lot nowadays, and occasionally even nod off on the bus; presumably, my stomata are then on public display, and beyond any voluntary control. Before she left, my wife used to complain that I snored, so perhaps that was the human equivalent of intermittently opening and closing them in an unconscious, but steadfastly arboreal rebellion.

Now that I live alone however, things have changed: if I fall asleep in a chair at home, the only thing that complains is the book falling off my lap; on a bus, it’s the person sitting next to me who becomes worried about my head resting on their shoulder. Of course, trees also have to worry about their leaves touching the guy next door, but in a forest they’re all stomatizing unless word comes to stop; I don’t think salivary dribbling is ever an issue.

Most trees hide their stomata on the under surface of their leaves; we hide stuff under our clothes, but for us, I suspect it’s more to avoid embarrassment than to minimize evaporation. Of course trees, like us, are not completely immune to the politer side of Darwin.

In fact, for some very human reason, I suspect that trees are almost as sentimental as us. I can’t help but think of Lorenzo talking to Jessica in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: ‘The moon shines bright. In such a night as this the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees and they did make no noise in such a night…’ Okay, it’s a bit of a reach, but they, like us, also have pollenary hopes, right?

If they make it through the fires, that is…

[i] https://theconversation.com/trees-dont-like-to-breathe-wildfire-smoke-either-and-theyll-hold-their-breath-to-avoid-it-227318

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