Origins: 65 Years in 4 Minutes
What a Tree Thinks
Origins
1960: The sugar maple tree (Acer saccharum) sprouts. The first televised presidential debate occurs.
October 23, 1962: “U.S. Imposes Arms Blockade on Cuba on Finding Offensive Missile Sites; Kennedy Ready for Soviet Showdown” (New York Times).
The maple tree is in a forest.
Growth
The maple tree was 9 years old in 1969.
May 10, 1972: “Antiwar Protests Erupt Across US” (New York Times).
The maple tree was 27 years old in 1987.
March 16, 1987: “Aids: The Victims; Aids, an unknown Disease before 1981, Grows into a Worldwide Scourge” (New York Times).
Change
The maple tree was 38 years old in 1998.
An Ice storm impacts over 1 million acres of Vermont forest.
The maple tree doesn’t panic.
Change, like time, occurs whether we recognize it or not.
Orientation
2012: The maple tree was 52 when the Sandy Hook school shooting occurred.
Direction
Sunlight from the southwest resulted in larger spaces between the tree rings. The tightest rings are on the northeastern side.
Fatigue
I tire of choosing, cutting, splitting, and stacking.
The maple tree is not tired.
Headlines are exhausting, too. These headlines are not new. Constant crisis, newspaper selling, and panic-inducing headlines existed before the maple tree sprouted.
Has fear lost its meaning? Illusions of fear from the comfort of a screen; that is something to be scared of. Awareness without consequence?
The maple tree is not scared.
1994: The homesite for my house is cleared, and the maple tree’s life is spared in the process. It was 34 years old.
The maple tree, now tall, can see suburbia in the distance.
The tree ring growth remains fairly uniform up to this point. This is because the tree was surrounded by other trees, shaded by them, and competing with each other for resources (e.g., sunlight). See the “1994” labels in the picture above.
Reaction
Between 1994 and 2015, the tree grew more on its southwest side.
The maple tree does react.
2015: I moved into the house and cleared more trees, allowing the maple tree to receive additional sunlight. The tree rings widen in this direction.
The maple tree was 55 years old.
The scar from where I tapped the maple tree in 2018 is circled above. The sap it produced was sweet and prolific.
Perception
2025: In 4 minutes, I drop the sugar maple tree and add it to a stack of logs that I’ll buck, split, and burn in the winter of 2026/27.
April 17, 2025: “Trade War to Weaken Global Growth and Increase Inflation, I.M.F. Warns” (New York Times).
The maple tree does not care.
*If you enjoyed this week’s project about a maple tree, consider pressing the heart button (❤️) at the top and bottom of this page. Doing so will bring it to the attention of other readers.
Incredible, Jesse—this is one of the most original and insightful posts I’ve come across.
Excellent arboreal history, Jesse! 👏
"My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one"
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins