Photo by Marcus Spiske, Unsplash
In dread winter cold, I walk under skeletal trees. It snowed yesterday, not much, just a dusting. Most of it's already melted and trickling into Wet Weather Creek. I didn't want to walk this morning, but I know from experience that getting started is the hardest part; once I'm warmed up, I'll be glad I got outside.
The woods have a spare beauty in winter. I love looking at the architecture of trees. I pause for a moment to study the intricate lace of bare branches against the pale blue sky. On impulse, I extend my forearm and examine my five branching fingers and trace the tree of blue veins under my skin. Mentally, I consider the trunk like structure of my torso, the column of my spine and the axonal neurons and dendritic synapses that populate my brain.
In a flash, I'm struck by how much I am like a tree or conversely, how much a tree is like me. We are so much like trees, in fact, that many of our cells are classified as being dendritic in structure, that is 'having a branched form resembling a tree.' (as defined by Wikipedia.)
The dendritic form is, I suspect, the underlying pattern for all manner of organic movement,growth and energetic activity, an archetype of sorts, an essential construct in the continuing evolution of Life on Earth.
As I unlock my door, slip back inside my warm house and pour a cup of coffee, it occurs to me that time is comparatively generous with trees; most trees will out live me. As time goes, we humans are not given much.
I wonder how average life span is allotted to different kinds of plants and animals. Is length of life a measure of importance in the ecosystem? Or is time capricious?
I once read that there are sponges living in the South China Sea that are over ten thousand years old. Sitting by the fire with my little dog, I only wish she could live longer.
If any of Earth's creatures deserve a long life, it is, I think, dogs.