“The plants that persist in the landscape are the perennials. Succession belies a fabric of short-lived, seed-bearing forbes, herbs, low-lying ground cover, “weeds”, until the great quilt of woody species descends and ascends. A perennial culture by design, for sure. The end goal, the eternal return. It is what persists through the years. It is as though a fad of annuals and biennials gives way to what endures over the long run, dwarfs the Roman Empire of quasi-culture, the eternal “fruit” meeting the fingertips and lips of generations.
We humans may come and go, but the trees persist, the big bluestem persists, the saguaro persists. The metabolic creatures of the soils at the feet of these great masters goes on digesting and digesting and turn what falls into a smorgasbord of its own making, feeds animalcules, the mycelial brain, the flora and fauna of the matrix of life billowing out in all its sublime magnificence. No two leaves the same, bark furrowing from freeze and thaw, birds snatching insects from their several niches, over several decades.
But the tree as tree goes on being tree, architecture of all life, a cunning, brawling river of vascular madness and celebration. For those that pay witness and rigorously recreate, patiently, this extraordinary spectacle of intragenerational would (wood)…”