Reactions
to the event seem to have ranged from, “That’s a little sad,” to, “It’s just a
damn tree,” to “Worse things happen every day. Why is this in the news?”
What
I find a sad is just how little attention this story received. I understand
that indifferent reactions might be attributed to a lack of reflection on how
long 3,500 years is, but the apathy permeating our culture really gets to me –
and historical apathy is particularly galling.
Three
thousand five hundred years ago, the Greeks were just starting construction on
the Parthenon, and the pyramids at Giza were still a relatively new sight. The
Egyptians were thanking Anuket for the fertile Nile floodplain and praising
Horus for making them the most innovative kingdom on Earth. Meanwhile, across
the Atlantic Ocean, a little sprout took root in the middle of a swamp and decided
to stick around for a while.
Fast
forward 700 years, and that little sprout was probably around 16.8 metres tall
and something like middle-aged in cypress-years. Back on the other side of the
planet, industrious Romans had started building a city. Another 300 years later,
the first public law – the foundation for the later Roman Constitution – was
introduced to the Roman Republic in the form of the Twelve Tables, around the
time when Socrates was a young man in Athens. Our cypress had reached its average
life expectancy of 1,000 years.
Another
1,000 years later, the ancient Greek civilization had long been swallowed by
the Roman Empire, which had only recently collapsed itself. Our tree was now
twice as old as it could have ever expected to be, much larger, and frequently utilized
by local Indigenous groups as a landmark for navigation.
Yet
another 1,000 years passed. Our tree had survived three millennia of fires,
earthquakes, and hurricanes. It had witnessed untold generations of American
First Nations people, and seen the European colonization of America and everything
that followed, bad and good – from the impact of colonialism on the First
Nations, to humans walking on the Moon.
The
Senator had been there for nearly every major moment of recorded human history,
living out its life in quiet solitude. As old empires died and new ones
reshaped the face of the Earth, this tree grew without interruption for three
times as long as it ought to have.
Had
we awoken that Monday to find that the Washington Monument, a national symbol of
American achievement, had spontaneously caught fire and collapsed, much of the
world would have been in shock. Had one of the Great Pyramids – international
symbols of human achievement – suddenly collapsed, we would have collectively
wept for the loss. But a 3,500 year-old tree transcends human achievement. It is
a natural monument to life itself, a symbol of all the aeons – of a time before
man could throw a spear, or hammer stone, or attach symbolic meaning to the
things he or she produced.
This
giant passed with just a whisper.
I’m
not saying people need to start worshiping trees as gods or change their lives
in any appreciable way. I just wish that if all you had to say about this event
was, “It’s not news; it’s only a damn tree,” you’d take a very brief moment to understand
what it meant, both in terms of nature and history.
A
monument need not be man-made to be meaningful.
//Gerald Jacobs, The Manitoban (University of Manitoba)
//Graphics by Marco Ferriera
//Gerald Jacobs, The Manitoban (University of Manitoba)
//Graphics by Marco Ferriera
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