The Life of a Tree

Mother Nature has a manner of inspiring awe in the most understated ways. As someone whose imagination tends to be swept away by the gravity of places, structures, and objects much older than myself, the history behind the earth's natural offerings is rarely lost on me. Trees, more than anything else, seem to inform my perspective on my own youth, and also the relative youth of my ancestors, my country, and my culture.

This photograph depicts the cross-section of a tree that lived for 1341 years before being cut down; its growth rings serve as perhaps the most tangible kind of timeline—more enlightening than any that is included in the index of a history book. This Giant Sequoia, which now resides at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, stood tall—and lived—as generations passed, as religions were born, as empires rose & crumbled, as the world was repeatedly transformed.

It saw not only the fall of the Roman Empire, but also the discovery of America—twice—as well as the birth of the United States of America, for good measure. It bore witness to the reigns of the Kings Henry, I through VIII. Its life spanned the entirety of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Age of Discovery. 

The life of a tree, upon close observation, is the manifestation of the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary flesh of nature. This tree, which survived through such a large portion of observable and recorded history, could easily have been mistaken as a mere feature of the contemporary environment. Perhaps that is the only rational explanation as to why such an immense being could be cut down in an instant. 

Whatever the explanation, the resultant cross-section of the fallen tree illustrates a truth that is easily forgotten: change as the world might—and the people and the structures that exist within—nature is constant. Humankind exists in a medium of living history, and each tree that has sprung forth from the rich soil of the earth is a physical connection to those who treaded there long before us.