Five years ago, in early May 2021, I came upon a recently fallen tree in Lake Sawyer Park. It blocked the trail, so a large chainsaw was used to remove a chunk, leaving a clean face for counting rings. I had time that afternoon, so carefully counted each ring with the tip of a pocket-knife keeping my place. I recalled doing the same thing with Bob Kuzaro 40 years earlier after he fell a large tree on the Lake Sawyer lot, we now call home. That tree dated to the 1780s, about the time our nation was founded.
On the tree in the park, though the center rings were tightly bound, the annual growth cycles were clear and distinguishable. I counted 210 rings, meaning this Douglas fir was born during the War of 1812. Its growth reminded me of a short newspaper article I’d written many years before.
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Anyone who has planted a tree and watched it grow to maturity may have wondered, where does that considerable mass come from? In 1630, the Flemish physician Jean Baptista van Helmont conducted a now-famous experiment to determine whether the tree’s growth came from the soil in which it was planted.
Helmont planted a fast-growing, 5-pound willow tree in a vat filled with 200 pounds of dry soil. For five years, he regularly watered the tree, by which time the willow had grown into a 169-pound tree. Upon recovering only the willow tree and its roots, Helmont was amazed to discover that the soil, which he dried again, weighed only a few ounces less than the original 200 pounds. He reasoned that the tree material couldn’t have come from the soil, but must have come from the water instead.
Helmont was right that growth didn’t come from soil, but he was only partially correct in his deduction that water accounted for the full weight of the tree. Most of the tree’s weight is actually derived from retained carbon as trees breath in carbon dioxide from the air. CO2 comprises about 0.4% of the air we breathe
So, the next time you admire a stately tree, remember, it’s about one part water, three parts air, plus a spoonful of soil nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and sulfur – all created through the process of photosynthesis in the presence of sunlight.
The word photosynthesis derives from the Greek words photo, meaning ‘light,’ and synthesis, meaning ‘putting together.’ It’s the life process by which plants, algae, and even some bacteria convert the energy of light into chemical energy, creating food and biomass. Carbon dioxide and water are stored in the biomass while oxygen is released. And from that expelled oxygen, much of the animal world survives.
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Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I naturally gravitated toward trees. Climbing them as a lad, cutting and splitting firewood as a youth, falling 20 feet from one and nearly killing myself at age 22, and eventually directing logging and reforesting projects as manager of Palmer Coking Coal. Over my 42-year career as manager, our company planted well over one million trees.
If you’ve known me for a long time, you’ve likely heard a favorite quote: “He who plants a tree benefits the next generation” – Cicero. Each spring, I gather up seedlings and plant them where they may do some good. I did so 18 years ago on Franklin Hill, where this photo was taken by Kathleen Kear, and used to illustrate my Voice of the Valley article.
A Day in the Life of a Tree
While in college, the Beach Boys released an album, “Surf’s Up” (1971), that didn’t seem much like a Beach Boys album. The group was changing with the times. Brian Wilson and the their new manager, Jack Rieley, together wrote a song for the album, “A Day in the Life of a Tree,” on which Rieley sang lead vocals.
The song is a dirge, a sorrowful lament for a tree. It was inspired by the budding environmental movement. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, a year before it was written. Back then, I didn’t care for it. Very few even know it. Most who do find it depressing.
Years later, I found its mournful recitation of a tree’s fate somehow comforting. One music journalist, Ian MacDonald, claimed the song was “so radically at odds with pop music’s ubiquitous irony that you either laugh or become humbled by its pained candor.”
Try on the lyrics for size, and if impressed, listen to the song with an open ear. It might take a couple of tries. For the patient listener, its poetry might even shine through its mournful message.
Song Lyrics:
Feel the wind burn through my skin
The pain, the air is killing me.
For years, my limbs stretched to the sky
A nest for birds to sit and sing.
But now my branches suffer
And my leaves don’t bear the glow
They did so long ago.
One day I was full of life
My sap was rich and I was strong.
From seed to tree, I grew so tall
Through wind and rain, I could not fall.
But now my branches suffer
And my leaves don’t offer
Poetry to me of song.
(Outro) Trees like me weren’t meant to live
If all this world can give
Is pollution and slow death.
Oh Lord, I lay me down
No life’s left to be found
There’s nothing left for me
Trees like me weren’t meant to live
If all this earth can give
Is pollution
Trees like me weren’t meant to live
(Oh Lord, I lay me down)
If all this earth can give
(My branches to the ground)
Is pollution and slow death
(There’s nothing left for me)
Oh Lord, I lay me down
My branches to the ground
There’s nothing left for me.
by Brian Wilson & Jack Rieley
Here’s the song set to a slowly rotating collection of Beach Boy photos. Click on the red button to play:
