Bristlecone Pine

As claws in the mountains of the west, lining the pacific, the oldest tree found with modern tools is a Bristlecone Pine. It is nearly 5,000 years old: a tree as old as history. The beginnings of human culture fringe at the end of this tree’s birth. Their rings have told us stories as old as myth. These trees live in harsh conditions with inhospitable soil. For the oldest living thing so many look skeletal, breaking and reaching out, somehow proof that life is so much more than it appears to be. Their wood is extremely dense as it winds over itself slowly year upon year.

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To all the trees that have not yet been categorized, all that these unnamed trees do for the living and the dead. May there be too many to name.

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