The American Tree: A view on the great pines and evergreens
As the wind calmly blows, carefully removing clouds one by one to reveal the majestically blue sky, Mr. Barlowe sits on an obscure bench built beside a sprawling group of pine trees. It’s the bench he’s sat on for as long as he could remember. The bench is just one of those stupidly mass-produced ones, it has no soul and equally has no importance to Mr. Barlowe. For the reason he sits here is not to look at the deep blue sky or experience the sounds of nature, instead, he focuses on the huge sprawling pine trees surrounding it. The pine isn’t a special tree in these lands, for it is the decidedly “American” tree.
But the point of the pine, Mr. Barlowe believes, is not just to survive and thrive in these lands but it encompasses so much more than what a simple observer will see through. The pine itself can do so much more, it knows no sentience but it doesn’t need to be conscious of the forever enduring existential questions humanity as a whole continuously raise. The pine is wood, you can burn it, you can carve it, and hell you could even build a house with it. Mr. Barlowe looks up at the pine, he admires it, this forest built his house, and if you backpedal two hundred something years, it even built America itself. The magical importance of wood is a complex story of both human technological development and nature’s continual evolution towards what it would eventually call “Perfection”. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the pine evolved to what it is now. No matter what tree, what country, and what opinion you have of them, they built the world as we know it today. The first bush-like trees fed the dinosaurs of old and continued to feed the mammals that came after those, even continuing to our ancient ancestors. Trees provided the height for smaller animals to survive and eventually thrive, the branches were adapted to building materials and eventually human firewood. Monkeys swung around ancient branches, while their predators could only wish to do the same. But that isn’t the pine tree, those are some crazy ancient trees from the days of old. But you could make the same argument for the modern United States, it sure wasn’t a country 400 years ago. European colonizers came searching for a new way to continue their unhealthy economic growth and bumped into the North American continent. Turns out, these new colonizers especially didn’t like the fact that they couldn’t just go “hey, there’s some land! It’s mine now.” since there were these so-called “Indians” or “Native Americans” who were already there for a long time with their own culture and land. The pine tree was here to see it all, the natural beauty of it extends not only to the physical 3-dimensional world that we human beings know and love. No, it extends far more, including your own mind. The natural beauty and practicality of the North American Pine built Jamestown, sheltered the American Rebellion, built a nation, and then supplied it with the massive wood supply that created the modern United States.
The pine then provided sustenance and growth for nature, shelter for the small birds from predators, greenery for the human emotions, and the swaths of land we now know as the Yellowstone national park.
The pine tree and its many traits of practicality, growth, and evergreen-ness built religions, nations, people… Everything you can see now with those fancy tech things called computers wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for World War 2 and WWII wouldn’t be here without the nations fighting it which all had to start somewhere. These nations, and especially the US, were created with the utilization of natural resources, mostly ores, and trees. Pine trees grow all across the US in sprawling forests and mountains, helping to build everything. But no, we shouldn’t just recognize it as just a tree anymore. The pine is unique to the growth and success of the United States, and in the same way, its vast array of problems.
A tree that created a rebellion, lead to a nation, which turned into one of the most successful countries in human history. The Pine lead to everything we know today, from the Atom Bomb to the Computer. This tree represents America, in fact, it very much formed it into the superpower it is today. So, shall we call it the definitive “American Tree”? It was the tree to overlook the creation of modern America, and watched it get thrown into wars then watched it industrialize and develop a huge workforce in the “American Melting Pot”. These trees then viewed the stumble of the US after WW2 with Vietnam and Korea, then watched the horror of the Gulf War and the War on terror. It has seen all, through the confines of its physical embodiment as a tree. An American tree.
