A tree’s life story is inscribed in its core. Each year, a new layer of cells forms around the existing wood. It’s thickness and color tell the story of weather and circumstances. Was it windy, wet, particularly hot that year? Was there a fire? A drought? It’s all written in the layers of wood, if you know how to read it, and enclosed in a layer of bark.

In between the wood and the bark there seems to be nothing at all. Just a line of demarcation finer than the width of a hair. But this is the only place that is alive and growing—wood and bark are not. It is called the cambium, and it is one cell thick. These living cells are undifferentiated—not wood, not bark—but eventually they become both. This imperceptible living layer listens to the cosmos. It pulses with the rhythm of seasons and stars, divides and dies to become water-bearing strength or encircling protection. Again and again, year after year. Death falling continuously out of life.

Hiking in the Redwood forest around my home, I stumble into a circle of trees. I don’t notice this until I am lying on the ground looking up: their slender tips frame a perfectly round patch of blue sky. Then I know: I am lying where a huge Redwood once lived. When an old tree falls or is hewn down, baby trees sprout around the decomposing stump. Life arising continuously out of death. This I learned from trees: death is not an end. It’s merely a challenge: to discover there is no end.

Image Tree sap. Photo: Laura Liska