Didi walks into the forest alone and quietly studies one huge tree.
She finds out how trees make fresh air, and what's hidden inside a tree that's been cut down.
It's Didi's little forest journal, ending with a soft thank-you to the tree.
One step past the edge of the forest
I take one step into the forest, and whoa — the air actually tastes different.
It's a smell I've never caught in the city. Damp earth, with the faintest green sharpness of leaves mixed in.
Without even thinking, I throw my arms wide and pull in a big, deep breath. My nose tingles a little, and — ahh, that feels good.
Today it's just me. No friends along. I came on purpose, to look at this forest nice and slow.
Leaves crunch under my feet. Up above, sunlight drips down in little pieces through the canopy.
I stopped under the biggest tree
Then I stopped, right in front of the biggest tree of all.
Even tilting my head all the way back, I couldn't see the top. The trunk is so wide that my arms can't even come close to wrapping around it.
I pressed my palm flat against the rough bark. Scratchy, cool, solid as anything.
What kind of secrets are tucked away in there? Once I'm curious, I just can't let it go — that's me.
So I opened up WAGZAK JUMP and tapped into "Trees Are Really Precious." I wanted to look at this tree even closer.
A tree breathing in, breathing out
On the screen, the tree was slowly breathing.
It pulled in the carbon dioxide floating around in the air — sluuurp — and then tucked the carbon away inside its body, nice and neat.
Then it puffed out clean oxygen — whoooosh — back into the world.
Wait — trees are the ones making the air?
I pulled in another big breath, deeper this time.
The oxygen this huge tree just blew out — that's exactly what I'm breathing in right now. That is wild.
So the way the air tasted different the moment I stepped into the forest? This was the reason.
So my desk used to be a tree too
Turns out trees don't only give us air while they're alive.
I swiped to the next screen, and the tree turned into a desk, then a chair, then a boat, and even a whole house.
And then it hit me — the desk in my room, the chair I sit in every single day, all of it was made from trees too.
I touch them every day and never once thought about it. All of this was a tree, living somewhere in a forest.
But is it okay to cut trees down?
And right here, I started to worry a tiny bit.
If we just keep chopping trees down to make furniture, won't the forest go empty and the air get worse?
But the screen had an answer ready for me.
It turns out when a tree gets really old, it slowly loses some of its power to pull in carbon dioxide and make oxygen.
So the very old trees get cut, used, and in their spot, brand-new little saplings are planted.
And those young saplings, as they grow fast and strong, drink in even more carbon dioxide and puff out even more oxygen.
Just cutting wouldn't be okay — but cutting and then planting and caring, that actually makes the forest healthier.
The secret hiding inside a log
Then where does all that carbon go — the carbon the tree spent its whole life collecting — when the tree gets cut?
