March - W A Time To Connect With Trees
By Linda Popelish e humans have recently lost a heart-breaking number of our tree neighbors to droughts, wildfires, and human actions. An event on January 19 of this year stunned me. A Mono wind of 80 to 100 mph brought down at least 15 Giant sequoias in Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park. The heaviest sequoia known weighs 2.7 million pounds. I can’t imagine what the sound was like when one of these enormous trees hit the ground. Even fallen, their trunks are higher than a person’s head. The size, age and beauty of a sequoia overawes anyone. I was lucky in my working life to get to survey and camp in the Sierra National Forest and visit some of these giants. The “presence” of big trees in a forest affects you in a way that is hard to describe— “deep silence, the soaring of space, and the insignificance of me” is as good as I can do. Even the large firs, pines, and incense cedars of the Sierras dwarf a human. I cannot help but be humbled next to any tree. All trees, of whatever size and species, are amazing and crucial to the health and well-being of people, and to the Earth as a whole. I am a transplant to the Southwest, but I have been here most of my life. I am still learning that no tree should be taken for granted—not a single pinyon or juniper (cedar) in our woodland or “pygmy” forest, nor a Ponderosa pine or Quaking aspen up at McGaffey. As a footnote, I’d like to mention that the timber guys I worked with in the Zuni Mountains found a huge juniper, more than a yard in diameter, as I remember. They named it the MOAJ (Mother of All Junipers)—a bit of making fun of the fact that our working environment was not only a forest of trees, but also a forest of federal acronyms. I hope it is still alive. We Are All Connected Trees are the ultra-example of how all life on earth is connected. Trees breathe out oxygen and take in carbon dioxide, the opposite of mammals like you and me. Trees are a living being that can make food from sunlight through photosynthesis. Forests can be important carbon sinks. One large oak can drink up 100 gallons of water a day and discharge it into the air. Even as a decaying corpse on the ground, trees are vital for the ecosystem as a source of nitrogen and micro-habitats. Among the innumerable books and articles written about trees, to me The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018) and Forest Bathing by Dr. Qing Li (2018) stands out. The Lives of Trees by Diana Wells (2010) is another. These are my sources for the amazing abilities of trees. The Overstory is a long and complex novel about the interrelationship of trees and humans, and how that relationship could look in the future. I think it is the most thought-provoking book I have read in the last few years. Do you want to know: What is it like to live on a small platform 200 feet up in the air in the limbs of a redwood? What does one botanist believe (and show by example) is the only way for a person to really help our planet live on? Are trees using humans to try to survive? Turn the pages of The Overstory to find out. More Marvels of Trees THEY ARE OLD “No other organism on earth lives as long as a tree.” A bristlecone pine in California has been determined to be 4,850 years old and recently another is believed to be more than 5,000 years old. Giant sequoias can be 3000 years old. We have ancient trees right in our region. A Douglas fir in El Malpais National Monument, a tree only 7 feet tall, was 650 years old when it died in 2014. According to the Las Cruces Sun News (June 14, 2018) among the oldest trees in New Mexico are another Douglas fir at El Malpais (1275 years old), a Limber pine (1670 years old), and a Rocky Mountain juniper (over 1900
Admiring two Giant Sequoias Mariposa Grove 2008: Michael Olwyler
44 March 2021
