Thursday, March 22, 2007
Trees Are Better Off Without Us
Another page to stare at in wonder. This time it is the 'most magnificent trees in the world'. Your wonder might be tinged with sadness, however, by the stories of the Prometheus, the bristlecone pine, and The Lonely Tree of Tenere. Prometheus was killed by a student taking core samples in 1964. Examinations of its cross section revealed that it was 5,000 years old and thus the oldest tree in the world. The Lonely Tree was in the Sahara and was so-called because it was the only tree within a 250-mile radius. Nevertheless, a drunk Libyan managed to drive his truck into it and now only a metal monument remains. Yet again one feels thing were going really well on this planet until we came along.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
In fact, my daughter points out that the drunk Libyan and the lonely tree are a vaguely Douglas Adamsish touch, as, thinking about, is the clumsy student.
ReplyDeleteIt's not our fault we came along.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful find! And the stories are great. Guess he will get some more examples now!
ReplyDeleteMy bristlecone pine is doing quite nicely - 12 years in and already a foot tall! Time for a new sponge though...
ReplyDelete