Growth rings

Photos of driftwood at Dungeness Spit

Sarah and I
talk a lot
about growth
and what it means
and how it works

The subject of
tree rings came up
because trees grow
slowly

I found some rings
on the beach
and I thought some more
and we talked some more

It was so exciting
I found myself digging
into scientific journals
to understand

because really I wanted to
know more about how and when and why
we grow
and, y’know
just get more light on
the whole life and death thing

I read about xylem cell formation
and lignification
and heartwood formation
and because that made me think
about my own body
I read some more about apoptosis
as opposed to necrosis!

then I read about dormancy
and which trees really go dormant
and why
and which ones only sort of
and which ones not at all
and what they do instead

life
and
death

are clearly not binary states

we host programmed death
all the time
our entire cellular structure is
replaced
we are always dying and
hosting and nurturing
new life

But the heartwood part was perhaps
the most fascinating for me. Because
it’s dead (the accumulation of so many
cell deaths after they laid down lignins)
but yet it will not decay or lose strength
(I read) so long as the outer layers are intact
and it is “in many ways as strong as steel”

So everything I have learned in life
many things along the way have become
outdated, replaced with new things I learned
Yet the process of learning and re-learning
and unlearning and learning some more

maybe that’s the heartwood
the current consciousness is
the live outer layers

the rings
tell
the stories
though they may never
be fully seen
by another human

after all
we aren’t all cut down
we don’t all wash up on a beach
sitting there ready to be
photographed
and talked about.

yet,

we are seen. we are.