[skip ahead to time-lapse video by clicking here]
I created a 1/4 acre clear-cut in my woods to introduce variety for improved whitetail deer habitat. The beech trees in this spot were all-consuming. Beech used to be a majestic tree, and specimens remain, but the majority near me are struggling, plagued by several problems that instigate their frenzied, obnoxious, and selfish growth; a non-invasive species that behaves like an invasive, but has been here as long as any other tree.
Trees were symbolic, signs of nature and peace. Fifteen years ago, when the guy delivering my heating oil handed me the invoice for 500 gallons, I bought my first chainsaw the next day. Trees became fuel. Sometimes they are weeds, other times, food. But now they’re usually friends; dynamic, responsive, supportive, and comforting.
Trees have always been important to me, and I do not believe my sentiment is in any way unique. Trees are beautiful and majestic, but such superficial attributions only go so far in explaining our nearly universal affinity for them. Their role in our lives is deeper, ancestral, and innate; despite their near extinction in certain regions of the world, they persist in both our reality and imagination.
When I cut this area two years ago, I planted apple trees to grow side-by-side with the remaining sugar maple saplings.
This spring, I set up a game camera to take one picture a day for forty-three days, captured in this 21-second time-lapse video. We begin on April 7, 2025, and end on May 20, 2025:
Time-lapse Video:
Snapshots:
Day 1: Barren
An arboreal lineage. We emerged from the trees after a long period of inhabiting them. We escaped predators in trees, found food growing on trees, and slept in trees.
Day 3: Snow is back
Then, an ice age and a changing climate, we adapted to the ground and the sun of the savannah. We formed circles at rest to watch all angles for danger and travelled in single-file lines, an efficient defensive posture to maximize group awareness. We used to climb trees for safety, but few were now available. We’re now a ground-dwelling creature.
Day 10: Snow melts
Merlin (the Arthurian wizard) was born under an oak tree in Wales. A Hawthorne tree entrapped him at the end of his life.
Day 18: Snow is gone again
The oldest tree is estimated to be 4,900 years old—a bristlecone pine in California. The tallest tree is 380 feet (redwood). The largest tree: a giant sequoia with a 103-foot circumference.
Day 21: The last breath of winter
“A forest takes care of itself, even as it builds the local climate it needs to survive. Before it dies, a Douglas fir, half a millennium old will send its storehouse of chemicals back down into its roots and out through its fungal partners, donating its riches to the community pool in a last will and testament.”
- Richard Powers, Overstory
Day 28: Life emerges
Olive, fig, oak, and cedar: trees are prominent features of the Bible.
“And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
- Genesis 2:9
Day 33: Leaf out
The beech trees grow on this site despite my efforts. Someday, the other trees I encourage may shade them out, but as you can see from the picture below, that is improbable. All of the green in this picture is beech. If you look closely, you’ll notice two wire cages in the photo; they protect the spindly apple trees I planted, which are growing approximately two feet per year since I put them in the ground.
Day 43: A sea of green
Demolishing a wall as part of a home renovation, I noticed the wooden studs from decades ago contained a tighter growth ring pattern than the new studs I replaced them with. The wide growth rings are the product of tree plantations with hypergrown trees that (in my experience) result in a weakened two-by-four.
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Beautiful, Jesse. Another one for you: in Norse mythology, man and woman were made from ash and elm trees -- Askr and Embla.
A really wonderful piece Jesse. It made me think about Joyce Kilmer, a Catholic poet and soldier who fought and died in WWI. He rose to national prominence (prior to the war) with his short poem, "Trees" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12744/trees). There really is such a deep, beautiful, and ancient bond that you capture so well with both the narrative and imagery.