Participant: Inspiration from the species that live 1,000 years and can put a new series of roots at any time

For a Yankee in the south, she scares everything about the environment. Heat. Humidity. Flying termite season (Seriously, it’s one thing). But this cold-snow-loving Norderner recently defied the beetles in order to escape from a divorce physically and mentally. Our divorce was as friendly and respectful, it still felt like a kind of spiritual death. The end of a life, if not my own life.

So I ate, prayed and loved myself to visit good friends in the golf coast of the Bay Saint Louis.

When I walked a few blocks from my friends’ place, I saw it. In addition to a speed limit. A Trees do something I’ve never seen before.

On the right I could see that the school bus-long branch of a large oak fell down not only had it touched the ground, but had always grown into the ground. On closer inspection, I saw that a completely new trunk had arisen from the same buried wooden mass. The snapping branch had led to a new tree.

Nowadays I did what we do and searched and searched on the Internet to understand what I had seen. The trees were Southern Live oak. It seems what I saw was a natural form of “LayingA branch touches and produces the ground Adventive roots Driven by hypoxia and hunting for resources. This limp branch “dies” never completely when it hits the floor, but at some point it can stop being part of his original tree. Looking for a newer life with new roots that find it as a second tree.

Zoom from this amazing branch to the southern live oak – Quercus virginiana – And you can see life yourself. Housed in the southeastern United States, they are known for their durability and live beyond a thousand years. Southern Live Oaks house and support many other different types, including Spanish mosses and small ferns. They sponsor an entire ecosystem in their wide wooden arms.

They are so robust that settlers in Southern live Oaks as “as” as “StormDrive out hurricanes. And the The oldest ship in the world The USS constitution, the “Old Ironsides”, which was commissioned by President George Washington in 1794, is still flooded across water. frame From south -facing oak.

But it is less these properties than the character of the tree that stands out. Especially its shape. It is almost horizontal. It grabs them what they cannot expect from a large tree. Redwoods and the like are skyscrapers, straight and distant, while Southern Live Oaks spread their branches around them. A hug from a tree is as close as possible. (Treehuggers, note: This is your preferred partner if you are looking for leaf campaigns.)

The 3 trillion trees On earth, two south -facing oaks stand out, especially for me. The McDonogh Oak in the city park in New Orleans is more than 800 years old, long enough to go back to the Magna Carta and Crusades. Hurricane Katrina was more than 2,000 trees in City Park, but not McDonogh, although the grandfather tree now needs crutches to keep its massive limbs in the air. If you drive to the east for about an hour, you will find the Equary Stick Friendship Oak on the Golf Campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. It’s also old at 538 yearsSo it breathed the same air as Christopher Columbus and the 18 generations of people who have lived from birth so far. The friendship oak spreads with 10 tentacles, which immerse themselves in the grass like a friendly, green-founded hole ness monster.

Sometimes we are distracted a little with the rabbits and baskets at this time of year. But we can go beyond this a little to see the beauty and premium in our everyday biological world. Easter, Day of Earth and the Arbor Day – all the same week this year, this Sunday, Tuesday and Friday – have a common focus on renewal, both spiritually and ecological. And somewhere in the middle of this milieu is the shift process of the southern live oak. Heck, the name also contains the word “live”. (This may seem superfluous if you name a plant, but these things deserve the distinction.)

It is too good to look from and to see that our trees are remarkable, not just resources or obstacles or ornaments. They are life itself – part of our life and we are part of them. You should give us hope.

When I came home to Colorado, I was greeted by views of pine and peeling -oak to see how the buds opened so many branches at the end. Sure, our local trees are not as impressive as the Southern Live Oak, but their potential and promise are the same: every tinecone and every acorn have the chance to grow their own way into another powerful tree, a thought that gave me a flash of hope.

Easter eggs are everywhere when you know where you have to search.

ML Cavanaugh is the author of the upcoming book “Best scar Wins: how you can be more than before”. @Mlcavanaugh