2023-10-27 15:35:12
About twenty years ago, somewhere in California, I stood under and next to and among trees so tall and old (and beautiful) that breathtaking fails as a description. Sequoia & Kings Canyon, north of Los Angeles, that’s where I was. A moment, and a place, to realize that ‘nature’ is incredibly strong, that there is so much around us that was already there long before we raced past it with our diesel vans, long before we took a picture of it to show on to put on Instagram.
That there is so much – even if we are no longer there. Simply because there comes a time when you as a human being have lived your life, or because there comes a time when human beings have managed to implement (economic) development so far and successfully that the quality of life on earth has disappeared.
Old age is not a competition
Sorry, I want to share a positive column with you. And that is possible, thanks to the plane tree in Het Wasven, on the east side of Eindhoven. The nickname of that ancient tree, I read in this newspaper on Wednesday, is the Spotted Southerner, but you may also know it because it caught fire in the summer of 2022. The tree is 263 years old. Sure, there are redwoods in California who laugh about that, but age is no contest.
Two hundred and sixty-three years old. There it says, then you have experienced something, then you persevere, or, as they say in Eindhoven, ‘then you remember when Ajax once won against PSV…’.
Last summer the tree was on fire, I have no idea how or why, but I do know that everything that is done to a tree, trees, forest, hurts me. Because every tree, every piece of forest is important, but also because there is almost no more beautiful symbol than a tree: growth, reaching up, standing firmly, shelter, life, shadow, survival too. And that is why this is a positive column: the ‘monumental plane tree’ is saved, it is saved with an exclamation mark.
You don’t have to be a tree surgeon for that
The fire had broken the connections between the crown (the leaves) and the roots, and they need each other – you don’t have to be a tree surgeon for that. The sugars produced by the leaves no longer reached the roots, so something had to be done. A bypass now ensures that new roots develop, which can then enjoy the sugars again, thanks to the leaves. That was already a more than good idea, it turns out to work.
But, and that makes it even more beautiful, the elderly tree (263!) has also produced shoots of its own, which help the roots in the ground and thus, literally and figuratively, keep the tree upright. The tree realized that some extra action was needed, and this is what it came up with. And it works. Which means that we will assist the tree for another ten years, after which it will be able to do it all on its own again. More than 700 more years, if the World Tree Foundation’s wish comes true. And I don’t know why not, because the tree, nature, is so much stronger than we can imagine. And fortunately.
Dolf Jansen is a comedian and writes a weekly column for Trouw. Read his columns here.
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