Dendrographia (den-dro-graf’-ia): Creating an illusion of reality through vivid description of a tree.
We had a stand of redwoods in North-western California They were Giant Sequoias that had been in my family for over one-hundred years. There must have been at least 200 trees scattered over 4,000 acres of forest—everything from saplings to mature trees. We just let them grow. We would harvest blowdowns or dying trees, but didn’t harvest the others. We could sell wood for as much as $10 per linear foot.
The seed cones are about two-three inches long and are shaped like eggs. It is amazing that they produce trees 165-275 feet tall. Every time I think about this, it seems almost unbelievable—in a way it is magic, and can supply an apt metaphor or simile for stunning growth and development —from small to huge—I guess any seed can symbolize that, but the Sequoia does it on a massive scale!
The bark almost looks like a skirt, flaring out to a thickness of nearly three feet at the trunk, and supposedly protects the tree against fire. The bark is brownish with deep ridges running up and down the tree, almost like external veins. With a diameter of 25 feet, it is hard to give mature trees a hug, but the little ones are fair game.
The Sequoia has a crown of evergreen branches. The rest of the trunk is bereft of foliage. Standing by a full-grown mature Sequoia, you have to crane your neck to look up to the tree’s top. A given ftree may be as old as 3,000 years old. That’s old! To stand by, and touch the huge trunk, can feel like one is channeling antiquity. Standing alongside a living being that may be 3,000 years old drives home how short our sojourn is on planet earth. Compare our 80-some-year-run to a sequoia’s 3,000 years!
What would it be like to live for 3,000 years?
The factual information about Sequoias above is gathered from the internet, the rest is fictional.
