Bristlecone
In the presence of the world's oldest trees......
At Patriarch Grove, White Mountains, California. 11,000 feet altitude.
Home of the Bristlecone Pines - world's oldest non clonal trees.
Oldest individual tree found so far: 5,077 years, and still growing….
Highest, driest,
eldest of all,
outliving everything else.
Up here, stone grows wood,
becoming hard as stone itself.
Here is the china blue horizon,
the deeper blue of altitude above -
just a hint of space showing through.
Here is the white mountain slope -
sun warmed rock, just waiting for snow.
And here the Bristlecones grow,
a living lesson in endurance, in existence,
in the art of just being - never becoming
more than what they are.
Under the sun, under the moon,
under the cold winter stars,
year upon year upon year.
Silence.
Eloquence.
Magnificence
As a young child my Father told me about the Bristlecone Pines - the world's oldest trees. Overlooked - disregarded by Europeans until the 1960's - the Bristlecones were hidden away at extreme altitude in remote desert mountains overlooking Death Valley. Their massive cousins - the Redwoods and Sequoias of the California coast - received all the fame (and still do).
Then, in 1964, a researcher cut one down and counted the growth rings.
To the astonishment of the US National Park Service, he had discovered - and killed - the world's oldest known life. The "Prometheus Tree" had been 4,847 years old....
The destruction of Prometheus was kept very quiet. A frantic search was conducted to find an older tree, but the next best found was younger by more than a century. Named the "Methuselah Tree," it is still credited by most sources as the "world's oldest tree." It's exact location in the White Mountains is kept secret.
However, in 2012, a tree in the same area was dated to 5,065 years, which makes it now 5,077 years old...
The Bristlecones can be reached by a long and winding, and rather rough, road. In 2014 Meg and I made our first pilgrimage to visit them. We returned in 2016 and again in 2019.
To us, it does not matter which individual tree is oldest. All of those trees are sublimely beautiful, including a tiny seedling we found. They grow - somehow - from amongst shattered white dolomite rock. Almost half their life is spent under snow, smashed by winter gales. Their growing season is ridiculously brief. Each year is a hard won victory......
They have so many lessons to teach us...
Note - yes, there are "clonal" fungi and trees which are older - growing new individuals from one set of DNA over millennia - but that's not the same thing. The Bristlecones are the world's oldest individuals.
I am utterly in awe of them.
 | A guest post by
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Forever, I’ll Thankyou for taking me up and on up till we reached Patriarch Grove.
As a young child my Father told me about the Bristlecone Pines - the world's oldest trees. Overlooked - disregarded by Europeans until the 1960's - the Bristlecones were hidden away at extreme altitude in remote desert mountains overlooking Death Valley. Their massive cousins - the Redwoods and Sequoias of the California coast - received all the fame (and still do).
Then, in 1964, a researcher cut one down and counted the growth rings.
To the astonishment of the US National Park Service, he had discovered - and killed - the world's oldest known life. The "Prometheus Tree" had been 4,847 years old....
The destruction of Prometheus was kept very quiet. A frantic search was conducted to find an older tree, but the next best found was younger by more than a century. Named the "Methuselah Tree," it is still credited by most sources as the "world's oldest tree." It's exact location in the White Mountains is kept secret.
However, in 2012, a tree in the same area was dated to 5,065 years, which makes it now 5,077 years old...
The Bristlecones can be reached by a long and winding, and rather rough, road. In 2014 Meg and I made our first pilgrimage to visit them. We returned in 2016 and again in 2019.
To us, it does not matter which individual tree is oldest. All of those trees are sublimely beautiful, including a tiny seedling we found. They grow - somehow - from amongst shattered white dolomite rock. Almost half their life is spent under snow, smashed by winter gales. Their growing season is ridiculously brief. Each year is a hard won victory......
They have so many lessons to teach us...
Yes, there are "clonal" fungi and trees which are older - growing new individuals from one set of DNA over millennia - but that's not the same thing. The Bristlecones are the world's oldest individuals.
I am in awe of them.