I was speechless when I stood before General Sherman, the largest tree in the world. The 2,200-year-old giant sequoia is over 100 feet around, 275 feet tall, and weighs a staggering 4.2 MILLION pounds.
While I was only able to explore Sequoia National Park for a few hours (a freak blizzard blew in and shut the place down for a week thereafter), those hours were some of the most magical of my entire trip. I’ve been plotting a return to the park and reading about the trees’ biology ever since.
What fascinates me about these trees is not only their size, but their resilience. It’s a subject that’s often been on my mind since the beginning of my journey, when I was still reeling from the death of my grandmother and the unexpected ends of both of my marriage and job (all within a few months).
That word “resilience” kept coming to me the entire day I explored Sequoia, especially when I walked inside trees who’d been hallowed near their roots, but were still standing upright, and growing taller hundreds of feet above.
Their survival was no mere accident. Each part of those trees – root to bough – was built to live through catastrophe. Even their tiniest parts, their seeds, point to this truth.
You might imagine that the largest trees on earth would need mammoth seeds to hold what must be an extremely complex set of genetic code. But it turns out sequoia seeds are only the size of a flake of oatmeal, and the cones which protect them are no bigger than a hen’s egg.
Sequoias do not release their seeds every year. Instead, they lock them inside highly durable cones, sometimes for more than 20 years at a time. What finally opens the cones up, you ask? Only that elemental human terror: forest fires.
During a forest fire flames can climb to the tops of even the tallest tree’s crown, where its cones reside. Even for a tree that survives, its cones endure hours (or even days) of blasting heat. Despite this, sequoia cones rarely break open during a fire, thereby protecting the seeds inside. That said, the heat does dry out the cones’ shells, making them brittle, and enabling other forces to finally break them open once the fires die away. In this way a tree’s tiny, delicate seeds are released into the world at last.
When a sequoia’s seeds finally meet the earth, they will find the fires have prepared the way for their arrival there too. Small trees and bushes that would have competed for scarce sunlight and water on the forest floor will have been cleared away by the flames. Below, they will also find the ground softened, leaving them easy access to moist, nutrient rich soil in which to grow their roots.
While only a few seeds will grow into multi-million-pound giants, every giant was once a tiny, helpless seed, released and given a chance at life by a one-thousand-degree wall of flames.
Reflection Questions
1. Like the cones holding the seeds of the sequoia, where in your life are you being broken open? What tiny seeds of possibility within you have been waiting for a moment like this to be released?
2. Where is a force of grace at work in your life right now, coming to meet you where you need it the most? If this feels impossible to answer, where in 2020 did grace meet you in a space similar to that of a helpless seed? How did it nurture you into the growth and productivity of this moment?
3. What soil are you growing in? Does the ground around you feel barren or scorched? No matter where you find yourself today, what unseen nourishments are waiting for you, already close, within reach, and plentiful?
Invitation: this post is the first part of my series: “Learning from Trees.” Throughout December, I will be publishing a number of short reflections on how my experiences with old trees in our National Parks have shaped my journey, and the questions they are leading me to ask today as I take stock of where I am.
At the end of each post, I will include a few reflections questions as I did above. I invite everyone reading this to reflect on these questions too, inputting their answers online by using this link or emailing me directly at tim@thiswalkinglife.com. Whether you’ve known me forever, or were forwarded this, your participation is welcomed.
I will share my own answers to these questions, along with a selection of your answers (anonymously unless you request otherwise) when I publish part two of this series (on roots), next Monday, December 14th.