A living tree can serve as a moral witness to successive human follies

Evidence

THE OTHER LESSON that Old Survivor offers us has to do with its function as witness and memorial. Even the most stalwart materialist must admit that Old Survivor is different from a man-made monument because it is, after all, alive. In a 2011 issue of a community newspaper called MacArthur Metro, the late Gordon Laverty, then a retired East Bay Municipal Utility District worker, and his son Larry, wrote a paean to Old Survivor: “There’s a fella who lives high up on a slope in nearby Leona Park who’s been a witness to our madness here for as long as people have been in Oakland. His name is Old Survivor. He’s a redwood tree and he’s old.” They frame the tree as a witness to history, from the hunting and gathering of the Ohlone people, to the arrival of the Spanish and the Mexicans, to the white profiteers. The tree’s viewpoint—unchanging vis-à-vis the many successive follies of newcomers—ultimately makes it a moral symbol for the Lavertys: “Old Survivor still stands…as a sentinel to remind us to make our choices wisely.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 27

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• ADDENDUM: Old Survivor as living sentinel/witness parallels the sentient and mythic-tree threads in the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article.

Related

• A tree survived logging by appearing useless to timber interests (similarity 0.81)