I just returned from six days in the Bay area, visiting my cousins. We had a beautiful, rainy-day walk through the Muir Woods National Monument, one of the few remaining old-growth coastal redwood forests remaining today.
The day reminded me of the ability of a complex ecosystem to survive when the inhabitants are able to become interdependent on one another. Redwood have a particular ability to survive through their burls, which allow genetically identical trees (family circle) to grow up from the roots surrounding a tree destroyed by fire or from a tree that has been felled by lightning or rot. These trees are a vivid reminder of how we, as humans, survive, thrive, and “live beyond” tragedy and suffering, raising like the young redwoods from their fallen parent.
Muir Woods was a soothing, healing place to be the day after the shooting at Newtown. I found deep solace here, as I always have in the woods. Most of the trees in Muir Woods are over 300 years old, the oldest being more than 1500 years old.
Many of the younger trees have risen up from the burls and roots of trees even older than that. These trees have stood silent witnesses to tragedy, from the elimination of the Milpas Indians to the Great San Francisco fire. They have survived in a symbiotic relationship. The moss soak in the rain that sustains the woods through the summer drought; the tree roots hold the gravel that clarifies the water to allow the coho salmon to survive; and so on.
These woods remind me of the inter-connectedness of my family. The cousin I visited is actually my mother’s first cousin, part of an extensive network of family that has supported one another over the four generations I have known in my life-time. My grandmother — Lois (Cook) Gowdy — and my cousin’s father — Raymond Cook — were siblings. Their parents, Lucas and Florence (Squires) Cook, survived the Great Depression. They had 15 grandchildren, more than 35 grandchildren, and more great-grandchildren than I can count. (I spent time with three of this most recent generation — my daughter’s third cousins — on this trip.)
Our Aunt Jeannette is now the family matriarch. She is inher 90s, having survived her siblings. She and our family has seen great tragedy and great joy, yet the family circle that has grown up from the great trunks of our ancestors, remains strong and interdependent.
As we move on from the tragedy in Newton, as I move into my fifth year of survivorship, the Muir Woods remain stalwart, a silent witness to the ability of nature to sustain life and to create life anew. The Woods does not ask why a tree falls, why a fire has destroyed the heartwood; it goes on with the business of re-creation, always reaching for the light, always soaking in the renewing rain.
Living Beyond 