“At the age of twenty he sustained an injury which resulted in a severe curvature of the spine, and that for some years he was somewhat stooped. I was unable to make out from his diary whether this injury was the result of...some object falling upon him and pinning him down, or whether his back had been overweighted and bent... As I could find no scars or bruises, I think that snow must have been the cause of the injury. However, after a few years he straightened up with youthful vitality and seemed to outgrow and forget the experience.”
— Enos Mills in The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine
We live our lives swimming in a sea of stories. A masterful storyteller, Enos Mills was born in Kansas in 1870. By the age of 15, he began creating his homestead in Colorado near Long’s Peak. By the age of 16 he owned 160 acres of wilderness near Estes Park. Instrumental in creating Rocky Mountain National Park, he was a dedicated conservationist who spent his days learning to see, hear, and read the natural world.
His writings reveal he was an apt translator of nature’s secrets. The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine honors “Old Pine,” whom Mills came to know intimately. Standing over 115 feet tall as it looked out over the southern Rockies, it’s trunk spanned a diameter of eight feet. Upon its death, Mills performed a postmortem. These excerpts offer glimpses into Old Pine’s struggles and triumphs.
In common
“Trees, like people, struggle for existence, and an aged tree, like an aged person, has not only a striking appearance, but an interesting biography. I have read the autobiographies of many century-old trees, and have found their life-stories strange and impressive. The yearly growth, or annual ring of wood with which trees envelop themselves, is embossed with so many of their experiences that this annual ring of growth literally forms an autobiographic diary of the tree’s life.”
Counting the rings
“I carefully examined the base of his stump, and in it I found ten hundred and forty-seven rings of growth! He had lived through a thousand and forty-seven memorable years. As he was cut down in 1903, his birth probably occurred in 856.
Evidence?
“I was sawing off a section of this lower portion when the saw, with a buzz-z-z-z, suddenly jumped. The object struck was harder than the saw. I wondered what it could be, and, cutting the wood carefully away, laid bare a flint arrowhead. Close to this one I found another, and then with care I counted the rings of growth.”
“The outer ring which these arrowheads had pierced was the six hundred and thirtieth, so that the year of this occurrence was 1486. Is it possible that at this place some Cliff-Dweller scouts encountered their advancing foe from the north and opened hostilities? The imagination insists on speculating with these two arrowheads, though they form a fascinating clue that leads us to no conclusion. But the fact remains that Old Pine was wounded by two Indian arrowheads some time during his six hundred and thirtieth summer.”
European explorers
“The year that Columbus discovered America, Old Pine was a handsome giant with a round head held more than one hundred feet above the earth. He was six hundred and thirty-six years old, and with the coming of the Spanish adventurers his lower trunk was given new events to record. The year 1540 was a particularly memorable one for him. This year brought the first horses and bearded men into the drama which was played around him. This year, for the first time, he felt the edge of steel and the tortures of fire.”
Conquistadors
“The old chronicles say that the Spanish explorers found the cliff-houses in the year 1540. I believe that during this year a Spanish exploring party may have camped beneath Old Pine and built a fire against his instep, and that some of the explorers hacked him with an axe. The old pine had distinct records of axe and fire markings during the year 1540...until the day of his death, Old Pine carried these scars on his instep.”
The earth moved
“From time to time in the old pine’s record, I came across what seemed to be indications of an earthquake shock; but late in 1811 or early in 1812, I think there is no doubt that he experienced a violent shock, for he made extensive records of it.”
“I suppose the violence of the quake displaced many rocks, and some of these, as they came bounding down the mountain-side, collided with Old Pine. One, of about five pounds’ weight, struck him so violently in the side that it remained embedded there. After some years the wound was healed over, but this fragment remained in the tree until I released it.”
Embedded
“Another record of man’s visits to the tree was made in the summer of 1881, when I think a hunting or outing party may have camped near here and amused themselves by shooting at a mark on Old Pine’s ankle. Several modern rifle-bullets were found embedded in the wood around or just beneath a blaze which was made on the tree the same year in which the bullets had entered it. As both these marks were made during the year 1881, it is at least possible that this year the old pine was used as the background for a target during a shooting contest.”
The warrior stood its ground
“It is almost a marvel that trees should live to become the oldest of living things. Fastened in one place, their struggle is incessant and severe. From the moment a baby tree is born — from the instant it casts its tiny shadow upon the ground — until death, it is in danger from insects and animals. It cannot move to escape enemies. Fixed in one spot, almost helpless, it must endure flood and drought, fire and storm, insects and earthquakes, or die.”
Over a thousand years in one spot
“More than a thousand times he had beheld the earth burst into bloom amid happy songs of mating birds; hundreds of times in summer he had worn countless crystal rain-jewels in the sunlight of the breaking storm, while the brilliant rainbow came and vanished on the near-by mountain-side. Ten thousand times he had stood silent in the lonely light of the white and mystic moon.”
About the author
At the age of 19, while walking on a beach in San Francisco, Enos Mills happened upon another beachcomber and struck up a conversation. That man was the naturalist, John Muir, and that conversation changed Mills forever. He spent the rest of his life as a naturalist and conservationist, writing extensively about his experiences, most notably in his book, The Adventures of a Nature Guide.
Video courtesy of Videvo.net
This video uses these sounds from freesound:
“Gunshot, Distant, A” courtesy of InspectorJ licensed under CC BY 3.0
“earthquake3” courtesy of zatar licensed under CC0 1.0
“Thunder, Very Close, Rain, A” courtesy of InspectorJ licensed under CC BY 3.0
“fire roar and crackle” courtesy of laptaper licensed under CC0 1.0
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