I Should Think Like A Tree

What happened 200 years ago matters. What we do today, matters.

In Bend, there’s a company fashioning reclaimed wood slabs into furniture, harvesting wood from burn sites, logging areas or, as the owner told me, from fourth-generation ranchers tired of looking at dead stumps. “That black walnut was planted 200 years ago by homesteaders,” he said. “It’s ancient!”

It wasn’t appropriate for me to explain that 200 years, especially by tree standards, is not ancient. Or that homesteaders who planted non-native species in the high desert of Central Oregon did so illegally, by diverted water from rivers, and leaving their descendants worried over drying farms due to exponential drought. That doesn’t change how beautiful the artistry is.

I ran my hands across the table’s end-grain, time captured beneath layers of lacquer, and listened to the owner admire the beauty and history tucked between each ring. I shared his infatuation, but secretly, I was editing his words.

From a tree’s perspective, ancient is beyond human grasp. Mature may be more apt. But the memories held between tree rings fascinates us because it’s the closest thing we have to touching the past. The center of that walnut table began growing in 1859—the exact date my novel is set.

After 30 years walking through Tahoe’s woods, I’ve only seen a handful of trees this mature in the Sierra Nevada because most were clearcut, harvested for timber. Very few very old trees are left.

This is not the table I was looking at, but thanks to Joel & Jasmin Førestbird on Unsplash for this photo.

The Memory of Seeds

I once met a Seed Saver who taught me that seeds placed in foreign soil cannot be expected to thrive. Like displaced humans, seeds know, expect, and crave nutrients, temperatures and sunlight derived from where they are from. Where we live makes us who we are. In a world where humans move around so much and displacement has become normal, maybe so much movement is why we’re not really thriving.

The Seed Saver told me to be careful about planting corn in Oregon because corn knows it’s from the southwest. Same with tomatoes. Seeds carry memories, generational knowledge. They know where they are supposed to be. It is like forcing people off their homelands then blaming them for not assimilating to foreign systems.

They said sharing seeds is a serious matter. I should sing when planting and ask permission, especially from heirlooms. Except my grandpa used to write, “Ray’s Heirloom, red beauties from Grocery Outlet, 2012” in scratchy pencil on old junk mail envelopes. He’d eat a ripe tomato over a napkin, let the drippings dry then move the seeds to an envelope. He saved so many seeds, no matter where they were from.

When he passed away at age 96, I snuck into his garage and took a couple of envelopes labeled 2010 or older. Seeds I didn’t think my aunts and uncles would use. I think about planting some here, knowing they’re not suited for Central Oregon. Now they live in my closet, locked in time until I start humming to reawaken their potential.

Five years ago, my uncle gave me lemon seeds from my grandpa’s tree. Out of the dozens that germinated three sprouted, one survived. It grows in my living room and is now five feet tall. I know it's a silly thing to grow a lemon tree in Oregon. Its memories are from the San Juaquin Valley, maybe farther away than that. But it reminds me of my grandpa, and of the precarious luck, patience, and levity it takes to grow something from seed.

Here’s a 500 year old tree still alive just south of Bend, Oregon. It’s telling that this sign includes the estimated board feet (25,000), indicating that we still place material value over the value of this tree’s generational knowledge.

Who Will Speak for the Seeds?

The memory of seeds is like time mapped in tree rings. Both carry more knowledge than one human generation could know. In Tahoe, my friend in the Wá∙šiw Community told me that Tahoe’s forests are being thinned to protect from wildfires and invasive understory species, but nobody seems to be thinking about the seeds. “They’re cutting trees based on location rather than seed cycle,” he said. “We need to be observing, planning for seeds.”

After my grandma died, my grandpa tried desperately to grow a persimmon tree for her. “It’s a silly thing,” he said to me one day, “for an old man to starting growing a tree.” He laughed about his many foiled attempts. Grandma never really liked persimmons, so he thought she was messing with him from above.

If trees hold memories, this book I’m writing about Tahoe’s deforestation feels like the obliteration of a thousand memories. Writing it may be my version of humming, trying to reawaken the seeds. Except, I’m not humming to the trees. I’m humming to you, the people capable of making change.

Thinking Like a Tree

There is a reason the Lorax keeps asking, “But who will speak for the trees?” It is us, voters, who empower policymakers to make or break our systems. That walnut slab I stood beside died when it was 200 years old, a displaced seedling when the American West was colonized. Because of self-serving American policies, we’ve changed so much in just seven generations.

It’s not silly to plant a tree, and give something to a world you will never live in. Wouldn’t it be nice to think more strategically? To send nutrients to one another? Look out for one another? Shouldn’t we pay attention to the motives and policies behind every single person up for election in our districts?

Let’s vote for leaders who think further ahead than their own personal profits. Who believe that warming global temperatures are causing catastrophic fires and reducing mid-winter frosts that should be killing tree-devastating beetle larvae but are not. (Due to climate change, that larvae has already migrated from Canada through Washington and is now in Oregon. It’s coming for California next.)

We need to vote for people who believe that a woman’s life has more value than her reproductive potential. That access to abortion saves women’s lives, whether she is too young to be a mother, doesn’t want to or, like me, has had to make heartrending decisions to protect her own life and reproductive organs. Vote for people who believe that women, like trees, are the seeds worth saving.

If we do not learn to think seven generations ahead, we will continue to put the world in a dire situation. This election is a turning point where we decide to go backwards or forward. I vote forward. I will vote for Kamala Harris and the Democratic ticket because I plan for a world that thrives in 200 years. I want a world where leaders put future generations ahead of themselves. At age 81, that’s what President Biden just did by endorsing Kamala Harris.

He just planted a seed.

Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash