The invention of trees 🌲

In honor of Earth Day happening Saturday, I want to celebrate the invention of trees, by evolution. And celebrate the mystery that invented evolution—for lack of a better word, let’s just say God. Thank you, God, for trees.

It’s wild to think about: We take trees for granted as a part of nature. Yet Earth, about 4.54 billion years old, was hanging out for about 4.15 billion years befores trees came about. Relative to my lifetime, that’s like trees coming into being just before covid-19.

Even at a local level trees operate at different timescales. A few weeks ago we planted a Burr Oak in our front yard to replace a dying Lacebark Elm. My son will be my age by the time it matures enough to produce those massive burr oak acorns.  I chose it because it’ll live for nine+ generations. 

These frames of reference remind me of at least three things: (1) How incredibly young humanity is in relationship to our surroundings, which invites me into awe and humility. (2) How insignificant my specific problems are from the timescale of trees, which helps me step outside of my narrow self-fixation/victim mentality and often, ironically, come up with creative ways of solving my problems. (3) Things we’ve never seen before and probably couldn’t have predicted will change everything forever, and stick around. This makes attempts to control long term outcomes look pretty unreasonable.

With love, Jordan