You Can Grow Everything Back Again
But you’ll always keep the scars
Who stops for trees?
I normally wouldn’t. I live surrounded by forest in a vast province where forestry remains the largest manufacturing sector of the economy. Every tree is different, the environment imposing its will on genetics to create 3,000,000,000,000 unique individuals. But it’s not like they jump out at us normally.
Our predator eyes are attuned to movement, always looking for something lame or weak or sick to chase off a cliff. Trees melt into the background unless something makes them stand out.
This one did.
A century ago, grizzled men came to these forests and cut down thousand-year-old trees with hand tools. You can still see the stumps they left behind today. Telltale notches cut into ancient bark so the loggers could insert platforms to stand on while they worked giant saws back and forth through the thick trunk. The productive wood was hauled away by mule team and steam train to build houses and railway ties and ships and rifles. The stumps were left behind to rot.
Now, other trees grow out of the same stumps. The rich rot of the old is the perfect nursery for the seeds of the new. That’s how forests work. It’s a metaphor that’s impossible to miss, any time you visit.
