Drunken Trees

I bought a CD a couple months ago by First Aid Kit with the title "Drunken Trees". I was searching online for a place to purchase the CD and came across a wikipedia page dedicated to "drunken trees".

To my surprise, drunken trees are a natural phenomenon. They occur when trees tilt, basically. They're displaced. This happens mostly in subarctic forests, when the permafrost melts and the trees starting leaning and tilting at odd angles, losing thier normal vertical stance, appearing drunk. These drunken trees can actually die from their displacement and the melting can upset the whole forest ecosystem by causing whole forests to die.

My PhD work also involves working in forest ecosystems and while none of my forests are that far north, I do find the whole drunken trees phenomenon intriguing. Maybe some day I'll be able to study those forest ecosystems when I have my own lab. For the time being, I'm content to learn all I can about "my" forests!

By the way, Al Gore sited drunken trees as evidence for "global warming". And First Aid Kit is a duo from Sweden, so they might have actually seen the drunken forests first hand.

"A forest of these trees is a spectacle too much for one man to see." David Douglas

"Our hearts were drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see." George William Russell