Trees of the World

By Craig: I can remember the first book that I ever bought with my own money. It was a Bantam Nature guide book called Trees of the World. I was in 2nd grade at the time so it was probably sometime around 1975 or 1976. The book contains colourful photographs of trees and a brief description of each of them. The world, I thought, was a very BIG place to be able to contain all the tree species mentioned in this book. I was fascinated by the various types, most of which I had never seen before. There were trees with strange names like "Monkey Puzzle" and "Witch Hazel." I soon became pretty adept at being able to identify the types of trees in the woods around my house. I can remember gathering leaves of the different tree species and pressing them together in wax paper, labeling each of them and filing them in a notebook. For a while I could imagine myself becoming a great botanist that traveled the world and categorized the different genus and species of plants and trees. A modern day Linnaeus! I soon began immersing myself in history books, and the daring adventures of the European explorers who traversed the oceans in the search for something unattainable. I was fascinated by these adventures and something in the background of my mind told me that I too would one day experience a similar challenge. Perhaps a taxonomist on a great expedition to the Amazon! The years, however, swiftly passed me by and I find myself now at age 47 reflecting on the promise that youth once told me. It had whispered in my ear..."Craig, everything is attainable. Life is a storybook. You are part of it!"
Somewhere along the line I came to realize that LIFE was not a storybook. I also came to realize that LIFE also meant removing yourself from an egocentric viewpoint and attempt to immerse yourself into the collective good. LIFE was not just about YOU. Admittedly this is the hardest concept for most people to grasp. This is why there are wars. If I were to spend my existence trying to attain the highest degree of self, and everyone else followed that same path then the world would be not just hard to live in, but impossible, for the species would drown in their own egotistical cesspool. Should I have gone on to study the Trees of the World as "youth" suggested to me so long ago? Something had changed...The storybook was gone. There was a sort of futility to the dream along with the rest of my dreams. It was confusion...chaos...Who was I to be master of the trees!

So what was it about the trees that held me spellbound in my youth? The great outdoors? The open space? The fresh air? When I was six or seven I can remember standing in my backyard looking out at the forest. A large white pine tree stood tall on the periphery of my father's property line at the edge of the forest. To me this pine tree was the tallest tree on earth. I was fascinated by it. I wondered how long it took for a tree to grow that tall. I can remember thinking that it must have taken millions of years to grow that big. I was afraid to go near it. What if it should fall? Sometimes I could hear the creaking branches and trunk when the wind was blowing. It was so old and sage-like that I could almost hear it speaking to me.
" I was around when your grandfather was your age" It said to me.
That must have been at the beginning of time...nobody was as old as my grandfather.
Then there were the numerous tree stumps that dotted the landscape around my father's property. Trees that had recently fallen to make room for the new house that my father had built. I counted the rings, 47, 32, 28, 112, 76, 38 etc...etc... Each tree had a history to tell. The stumps had started to rot which made grand homes for lizards, insects and small mammals. I soon realized that trees eventually died just like humans...There was something depressing about this. They lived a lonely life, not even being aware of their Existence. I thought about this and also thought about how fortunate that I was to have a consciousness. To know that I existed!
Somewhere along the line my dream of becoming a botanist vanished, just as my other pipe dreams of becoming a paleontologist, or a major league baseball player. It just wasn't in the cards. In fact, I am not that much removed from that ancient dream of becoming the next Linnaeus. Even my knowledge of trees has not advanced much since my 2nd grade understanding of the different types of "trees of the world." I simply lost interest, just as I lose interest in most things except for the concept of "time" which lingers around me like a plague. I still have the book that first prompted this hopeful ambition four decades ago. It's glued binding has brittled (is that a word?) and snapped. At some remote time I must have taped the cover to the front page, but even the tape has yellowed and is pealing back as if the book is groaning and trying to tell me..."Nice try buddy, but like your dream, I too am getting old and want only to transform back into the elements from which I was made...Yes...that's right...a tree!"
I open up to page 31 and start reading..."Monkey Puzzle, family: Araucariaceae Araucaria araucana, In many temperate countries this bizarre conifer from Chile is planted as a curiosity remarkable for its unusual branching system..."