One of the things that makes trees so easy to admire is that, for the most part, they’re older than you.
All of the big ones—the massive American elm down the street, the huge Coast Redwood in Volunteer Park, the giant-sized Bigleaf Maples all over the place—have seen at least a hundred summers, meaning they were around before I was, a feature of the world (at least the world where I live) that becomes less common with every passing day.
Many of the buildings the pre-date me are being torn down to make room for brand-new condominium developments and a good number of the people who peopled the earth before I did are making their ways off to the great beyond. The old trees, however, are, for the most part, still sticking around to see what’s going to happen in the current century and probably, for many of them (unlike me) the one after that.
A team of arborists did just remove an ancient maple tree down the block whose trunk had split apart in a recent storm, but they left the mighty base of it to serve as a reminder of its presence and a pretty cool throne on the parking strip of the house it used to dominate. That seems like a decent model for one’s own demise: to fall apart quickly in a single event but be able to have a memory of you remain for little kids and lovers to enjoy after you’re gone.
It’s a bit too woo-woo to imagine that the trees remember the events they’ve witnessed during their lives, but it makes scientific sense to assume that the conditions under which they grew are somehow embodied in their cells. The black locust across the street from my house doesn’t literarlly recall Seattle’s development over the past 150 years; it does, however contain molecules that were around before 1900; in that sense, its memory is way better than mine.
All of the big ones—the massive American elm down the street, the huge Coast Redwood in Volunteer Park, the giant-sized Bigleaf Maples all over the place—have seen at least a hundred summers, meaning they were around before I was, a feature of the world (at least the world where I live) that becomes less common with every passing day.
Many of the buildings the pre-date me are being torn down to make room for brand-new condominium developments and a good number of the people who peopled the earth before I did are making their ways off to the great beyond. The old trees, however, are, for the most part, still sticking around to see what’s going to happen in the current century and probably, for many of them (unlike me) the one after that.
A team of arborists did just remove an ancient maple tree down the block whose trunk had split apart in a recent storm, but they left the mighty base of it to serve as a reminder of its presence and a pretty cool throne on the parking strip of the house it used to dominate. That seems like a decent model for one’s own demise: to fall apart quickly in a single event but be able to have a memory of you remain for little kids and lovers to enjoy after you’re gone.
It’s a bit too woo-woo to imagine that the trees remember the events they’ve witnessed during their lives, but it makes scientific sense to assume that the conditions under which they grew are somehow embodied in their cells. The black locust across the street from my house doesn’t literarlly recall Seattle’s development over the past 150 years; it does, however contain molecules that were around before 1900; in that sense, its memory is way better than mine.
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