While the planting of trees is important in our ongoing need to sequester carbon from our atmosphere, it is just as important to protect and preserve our ancient trees. It is, in fact, vitally important. The Bristlecone pines are some of the oldest tree species. Methuselah, a tree in California was recorded in 2020 as being 4,852 years old. An even older one is said to be 5,070. Bristlecones have the ability to survive at altitudes of 10,000 feet above sea level. Pando, also called the Trembling Giant, is a Quaking Aspen located in Utah and is thought to be over 80,000 years old. A Llangernyw Cypress in Iran is believed to be over 4,000 years old and a Yew located in a graveyard in Wales is around that same age. A stand of Jurupa Oak in California is over 13,000 years old. Standing at only 16 feet tall, a Norway Spruce in Sweden is nearly 10,000 years old! These are some of the oldest, but there are many other ancient trees that have stood for more than 3,000 years.
I wrote one of my very first poems while I was still in high school, in early 1970. This was also the year that the Joni Mitchell song, Big Yellow Taxi, was recorded. She sang, “They paved paradise to put up a parking lot…You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I knew even then that there was something magical about trees and that they have intelligence far greater than any human might guess. Here is the poem that I wrote during that time:
IF GOD LIVED IN TREES
Perhaps God lives in trees
trees that reach, stretching high
desperately towards heaven
while remaining imbedded in the ground
whose fate it is to look upon this hell
in which they are amidst
Their mysterious limbs
wavering in the wind
leaving impressions of fear
concealing the hidden secrets of time
that lie deeply rooted in crusty bark
hidden from our poor eyes
Perhaps God lives in trees
where he sadly watches
sees and hears destruction
where will he go when the trees
are all gone?
