The Healing Tree
About a mile into the entrance of Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove, stands my most favorite tree of all, a towering reddish-brown beautiful Giant Sequoia. Formally, she’s named “California Tunnel Tree”, but I don’t think that name comes close to doing her justice. After all, she is far more than the name she was given after the tragedy she endured some 125 years ago.
That’s when a massive part of her was gauged out by men who thought that doing so would draw visitors; which it did. People came in droves to drive through her in their carriages and later, their cars, and posed for photographs inside her now famous hallowed out trunk. Thankfully, that’s no longer allowed, and the National Park Service now protects her, and the other ancient trees in the grove, from the harm we humans can inflict.
Remarkably, even with the devastating trauma to her base, she still stands. In studying her resilience, scientists have found that she is still upright, in part, because she is actually healing herself. Inside her carved-out trunk, sap spreads and new bark is growing – and has been growing – in the tiniest efforts – for over 125 years. Growing ever since the day she was gutted without care.
She is injured, but able, and she is slowly covering her open wound. At a towering 210 feet tall, her root system extends out over 100 feet anchoring her into the very spot she began to grow nearly 2,000 (!!!) years ago. There she is grounded, supported by a vast root system expanding throughout the grove, her roots entangled with others in their collective ancestral home. In that spot, surrounded by her extended family of towering Redwoods and Sequoias, she grew resplendently; without harm from humans, and without a famous name.
Yet, in her 1,875th year, she endured a tragedy that has come to define her to the outside world.
But not to me, and I imagine not to others who have stood in the presence of her grace.
Yes, she was violently violated and willingly wounded by the hands of another, but that is not who she was long before the assault to her soul and it is not who she has grown to be after. As I visited her, I came to see her for who she is now, not who she is as her trauma. To me, she is not “the tunnel tree”, she is “The Healing Tree”; and the perfect reminder for us all. A natural monument to the power of self-love and the invaluable support of a deeply rooted system. She stands a testament to trauma, making a resilient statement that we need not be defined by our harm, that we can heal from the inside out (with help from those who love us), and indeed, we can rise up rooted like trees, alive, strong and healing.
