A Tree is a funny thing
Written by Dan McDonald
I noticed a tree blowing in the wind.
How did it stand?
Shutterstock
If a tree were only something wooden,
a strong wind could snap the tree in two. But trees are adapted for their
surroundings - limber as well as wooden.
Shutterstock: Asian bamboo trees
Trees can only stand as tall as
allowed by their roots. These redwoods in Muir Woods north of San Francisco
stand very tall.
But Redwood tree roots don’t run deep.
They do run wide and intertwine one Redwood tree root with four or five more in
a family of trees. Each tree’s root lends strength to the root system of its
neighboring trees. In redwoods it takes a village to grow a tree.
Redwood tree roots are like cables interwoven creating strength
for a community of trees.
Trees are more wood at the bow and
limber at the top where the breeze is unencumbered by the forest.
These limbs can sway with the breeze (Shutterstock)
Every tree in a forest has its
strength. Some are made to weep with the wind, others to stand erect and
wooden. But for each the goal is to withstand the winds and remain anchored to
their roots.
(Shutterstock)
Sometimes trees
are marked and scarred by their wounds from the storms they withstood, but in a
tree when that happens we speak not of its scars but its resilience.
The Telescope Tree (Yosemite Park) split by lightning still
lives, a wounded beauty.
You can stand inside her and see the sky
What did St. Paul mean when he told us
we were meant not to be tossed by the waves or swept by the wind? Did he think
we could go through life’s storms unscarred? Or did he imagine that as long as
we were kept connected to our roots, that when the storm was done we’d be left
standing in the sun bearing our fruit in its season?
A tree is a funny thing, wooden and
limber, blowing in the wind, anchored in its roots, standing in a storm,
scarred but still standing and bearing fruit beneath the sun and in the rain.
