Today’s lesson from the Big Tree walk is a simple one. Spruce and hemlock self-prune. It occurred to me as Cedar and I hit trail (with some lovely fresh snow) this morning, that these old boys and girls are adept at whatever the opposite of nostalgia is. They don’t cling needlessly to their past; they launch for their future, dropping their lower branches as they go. 

I was reading this morning that there’s a sort of cost-benefit analysis going on here. While curiosity might pay to the raven, sentimentality pays no dividends for our local spruce and hemlock. Don’t pull your weight? We’ll just cut you off from nutrients and engage “cellular senescence.” In addition to being a much prettier sounding word than “cladoptosis,” senescence allows some juicy anthropomorphism. Maybe we can age with such sibilant grace, leaving behind things that no longer serve us and growing, still, with full-on optimism for the future. 

But even when the tree cuts off the goodies from its lower branches, it has no way to clean house. Like the rest of us, it awaits the days or the years’ surprises, all the forces of the forest itself—rain, snow, insects, fungi, to… as President Biden implored us last week, “finish the job.” 

Cedar, by the way, has finished the job of being full grown. She’s eighteen months, with no senescence in sight—only sighs that the walk is done.