To the Protege: Walking with Giants
It's just past birthday time for me. During my birthday month, which I call “Birthday Festival” (so I can stretch it as long as I want, and treat myself with epicurean delights with impunity), I indulge myself slightly. I had the chance to be on the West Coast, close to one of California's coastal redwood groves. I was born in California and as a child, my ears always perked up around California stories. The redwoods, one of the world’s oldest living organisms, have always been one of those stories I've wanted to touch and experience up close. On this trip I was finally able to do that. I was able to walk among the giants.
I'm sure you've had similar experiences with the emotion I'm about to describe. When we came up on some of these "Seven Wonders of the World" sorts of locations and experiences, like Niagara Falls, the still-standing Pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon in Athens, or the Coliseum in Rome, it's easy to experience the feeling of humility. It is easy to remember that any brilliance we may think or actually have needs to be appreciated in light of all that has gone before and in the sparking ingenuity of genius others.
These redwoods are old, real old, perhaps some of the oldest plants on earth. I was sobered as I stood before one of the informational displays, a thin slice of one of the trees. As you know, you can estimate a tree's age by counting the rings from the center core outward, one year for each ring of growth.
In the pictures below, maybe you can get an idea. These markers offer: "1508 Michelangelo Begins Sistine Chapel Painting," "1492 Christopher Columbus Reaches Americas," "960 Gunpowder Invented in Ancient China," "570 Birth of Mohammed."
The lonely time marker at the very center simply says: "544 Tree Sprouted in Northern California...Chess First Played in India."
Gulp.
Seized brain.
"Wait. This tree is how old again?" For a moment, my temporarily incompetent-to-grasp mental functions humbled me.
I was suddenly aware. I have no way of associating the phenomenon before me with anything else in which I have live contact.
Well, except maybe one thing…
It is our capacities to live, grow, and interact with others that we participate in their cultivation so that they too grow into legacy people. The names and events that appear on little white labeled cards extending from "1936 Tree Cut Down" or "1776 Declaration of Independence Signed" to "600 Height of Mayan Civilization," are only known to me because thoughtful people with a will to engage in lives that mattered act so that something of themselves lasted. Their living became legacy.
Then, while hiking for higher terrain to see the ridges and valleys of these botanical skyscrapers, I stumbled. Looking down to see what got underfoot, it hit me.
It was a cone.
This is the seed pod from which something like "544 Tree Sprouted in Northern California...," came from.
Brain skips again.
On the day they bury me, this tree will still be at work climbing upward in height and onward in time...perhaps 600, 1500, 2000 years beyond my living in time. And just as "544...Chess First Played in India" became the benign footnote in time for a playful practice that is stilling being enjoyed today, so someone is inventing and enjoying FIRSTS and LASTINGS in my day and time.
These trees ask me: "How then must we live?"
For me, I'm going to keep investing in the moldable, growing, thriving lives of the human family. The minuscule seed of the mighty redwood full of latent possibility is me, is you, is the juvenile living generation with whom we share the resilient, old friend of a planet. I'm going to be a mentor to the growing things. I'm going to accept the developmental gifts of the giants around me who are down the growth road a ways.
Join me.
Be tall. And grow someone, real tall.
