TREERINGS
Every ring another year, that’s what we were taught as children. If you count those rings within the trunk of a tree, slowly working your way outward from the dense spot in the middle, to the broader wave concentric patterns that follow, you can figure out the age.
Like people though, even with this simple formula, it can still be hard to tell. The rings, and by extension the years, are never perfectly aligned. There are harder years where the rings almost bleed together in a blur of time brought on by bad weather, stagnant stasis, infection, and disease.
Other rings are wide and proud, good years of prosperity and growth. They vary in colour as well, some of them darker and almost pocked with effort, other light and solid.
Like trees, we go through similar cycles. We have periods of prosperity and excellence, and moments of sickness and despair. The signs of our growth tend to be externalized those. Rather than rings, we have wrinkles. Rather than barren branches woven throughout those that flourish, we go bald.
Most trees change colours on a seasonal. Our hair tends to change gradually; sometimes we start of blonde at birth and slowly transition to a darker colour. Most of us see our familiar shade slowly infused by grey. Unlike trees, more of us still are too vain to accept these changes, adding colours of our own selection to mask the results of the life we have lived.
A fallen stump will gather moss and fungus, strange delights that sprout from its course outer layer. We gather liver spots, moles, freckles. When we have fallen, we disappear, back into the dust.
Trees and people alike both start to droop towards the end of their cycles. Sometimes pieces fall off, the skin grows frail and no longer protects us the way it once did. This is the cycle of life, and it is the same for all things living.
It can be sad to be witness to the ravages of age, but it shouldn’t be. There is majesty in those broad trunks. Etched with the initials of young romantics, those elderly giants represent a life lived. The remnants of old tree forts that dangle forgotten from their limbs represent the guidance, support and generosity. Their ominous sprawl contains the wisdom of ages.
A long life should be celebrated. A bell should ring for each passing year. Even when a tree has been felled, when it has been cut and sliced into smaller pieces, it continues to give. It provides heat on cold winter nights. If left at peace, it slowly fades away, giving back to the surroundings from which it first sprouted.
Every ring, another year, another reason to celebrate.
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