Resolute

SA Guide: Discovery Trail, Methuselah Walk

Circa 5,000 years ago (≈3000 BCE) - about the time of the founding of the city of Troy and the rise of Aegean bronze-age civilizations - a shoot, born of a seed probably cached by an industrious nutcracker, broke through the soil of what would come to be called the White Mountains, in what would come to be called California.

The shoot would grow to be a tree, specifically a Bristlecone Pine. And it would live a cold, arid, windswept life on the nutrient-poor soils of its lonely, 10,000' elevation hillside.

That tree is still alive today.

We visited the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest area of Inyo National Forest recently. It's high country, it's beautiful and cool, and it offers enjoyable hiking. But as the park's name suggests, the big draw is the trees.

Great Basin Bristlecone Pines - Pinus longaeva - are the oldest trees in the world. Redwoods are taller, Giant Sequoias are more massive, and Noble Firs, at least in December, are more heavily ornamented. But for my money nothing beats the reverential exhilaration of standing next to, and in contact with, an old, gnarled Bristlecone Pine. These twisted witnesses to millenia of sunrises and sunsets are the epitome of wilderness "cred."

The truth is I don't know if the tree pictured above, or any of the trees on this page, is 5,000 years old. There are several Pinus longaeva specimens over 4,000 years and at least one documented to be over five, but the identity of these trees is seldom revealed. The Methuselah Tree, made famous by Edmund Schulman (the discover of the true antiquity of this species), is reputed to be seen when one hikes the eponymous trail out of Schulman Grove, but its exact location is not advertised.

Regardless, knowing which is the singular oldest individual is unimportant (and according to the park, probably wouldn't be a good thing for the tree). These groves are filled with aged sentinels, and they all have stories to tell.

Stonehenge was finally finished approximately 4,000 years ago. It was also about this time that horses were domesticated for transport purposes, Abraham founded Judaism, and glass made its debut.

The junior tree on its eroded slope of the White Mountains has grown to about NBA height, in the neighborhood of six or seven feet.

And it is about a thousand years old.

Great Basin Bristlecone Pines don't prefer torment. They don't seek out dolomitic soils and sand-blasted mountain-tops; they just manage to make the most of these arduous circumstances. One scientist quipped that they don't live an amazingly long life so much as they take an exceptionally long time to die.

Indeed, if you plant a P. longaeva seedling in fertile soil under good conditions it will grow fast and straight and tall - and it will die comparatively young. The combination of a short, dry, undernourished growing season resulting in thin, dense layering of bark, fewer pests that are capable of penetrating that tightly-packed surface, and the ability to struggle on as sections of its system suffer damage, is what stimulates the unique ability of the Bristlecone to persist.

Interestingly, other trees, even closely related species, grow in these conditions but cannot manage the great age of the Bristlecones. Some have suggested there must be something physiological that enables this pine's success, but so far no function or compound has been identified.

I know anthropomorphizing is inappropriate, but these trees just seem so damned stubborn. I can't help but admire them.

Just under 3,000 years ago, King David died and his son Solomon became king of the Israelites.

On the other side of the world our 2,000 year old Bristlecone has struggled its way to a height of twelve to fifteen feet, its upward reach slowed by a genetic mutation causing the trunk and branches to warp and twist back upon themselves. The never-ending wind has scoured one side of its trunk to a golden-orange that shines as the sun sets, and years of erosion have begun to uncover its roots.

Many of the older Bristlecone Pines appear tortured and distorted. This aspect is amplified when the steep ground in which they live undergoes inevitable change - erosion and landslides eventually exposing roots to the open air. Dr. Ronald Lanner, a botanist who studies conifers, emphasizes the irony,

"Here then is a disadvantage of great old age: persist too long and eventually the very ground you grow in will wash away!" - Conifers of California

Now and then an important root section cannot withstand the exposure to infestation and aridity and will die. So too, then, dies the sector up through the tree that was sustained by that root. If this happens to enough roots what is often left is an effigy of predominantly dead wood propping up the last living sector - perseverance and privation entwined like a caduceus.

Around the beginning of the Common Era, Cleopatra rules over Egypt, the Antikythera mechanism is constructed, and Octavian is voted the title of Augustus, essentially marking the end of the Roman Republic and the dawn of the Roman Empire.

A couple hundred years earlier, the Bristlecone woke to its one millionth dawn, which, like most that came before, was cold and sere. Now, at about 3,000 years of age, under twenty feet in height, and having barely embarked upon the next million, a fungus has destroyed one of its root sections. Just another day in the life.

The tree is still a full two millennia away from being discovered and appreciated for its longevity.

I don't know if I saw a five thousand year old Bristlecone Pine on the Methuselah Walk, or any of the hikes I took in the park. But I like to entertain the conceit that the old trees were aware of my presence, or at least made good use of the carbon dioxide I exhaled as I trudged up the steep, high-altitude hills. In any case, I got the better of the bargain.

We live in a world of impermanence - Pinus longaeva lives a life of different dimension. While I'm not thrilled with the reality of my own transience, it's some comfort to think that the trees that have endured there for thousands of years will continue to carry on strong long after I'm gone.

Okay, maybe not "carry on strong," that's not exactly what they do. They just...carry on.

But they do it really, really well.