The photographs of the Ponderosa Pines I share only capture a portion of what I feel among these elders. How does one achieve in a photo what John Muir once said about the Western Yellow Pine (Pinus ponderosa),"Of all the pines, this one gives forth the finest music to the winds."
It takes 50 years for a Ponderosa to start to produce cones.
Until a Ponderosa Pine is eighty or a hundred years old its bark is black.
-Richard Powers, The Overstory
There may be no lovelier poem for me about the celebration of trees than Mary Oliver's When I Am Among The Trees.
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
I was excited about capturing this photo because I felt like the trees were exhaling and saying," Ahhhh, sunshine."
If we want to use forests as a weapon in the fight against climate change,[crisis] then we must allow them to grow old, which is exactly what large conservation groups are asking us to do."
-Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How they Communicate
We should make it a national priority to save what remains because old-growth forests can help save us.
For more about old-growth forests please visit these links:
https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/
https://www.americanforests.org/
