I wouldn’t consider myself to be a “tree guy.” I’m not even sure if that’s a thing. But, I happened to be reading an article on sequoias that caught my eye while scrolling my Facebook news feed the other night and I learned a few interesting things about these trees that I thought I would share.
If you’re not up to date on your sequoias, let me catch you up.
Sequoias are often referred to as nature’s skyscrapers. If you’ve never seen a sequoia, Google it. They’re big. Really big. Sequoias can grow to over 30 feet in diameter and 250 feet tall. In the United States, they’re found in northern California and can live to be over 3,000 years old.
While going down the mighty sequoia rabbit hole, a.k.a. wasting time while my boys took a bubble bath, I noticed two lessons about the trials of life that we could learn from these amazing trees.
Don’t just grow deeper, grow wider.
We’re often told when we go through the storms of life that we need deep roots. That may be true. But, the sequoia doesn’t have deep roots. Instead, these mighty trees become so mighty because while most roots grow deep, their roots grow wide. One of the secrets of the sequoia is that if the tree is to have a chance in reaching its full potential and weathering the storms that come its way, it can’t grow alone. If a sequoia grows by itself, it will topple over. It doesn’t stand a chance.
But, when sequoias grow with other sequoias, something amazing happens just below the surface – their roots that grow wide will reach out and look for the roots of other nearby sequoias. And when it finds another sequoia’s roots, they begin to intertwine and interlock, making them stronger than they would have been by themselves and allowing them to grow taller than any other tree.
If we want to weather the storms of life, we must be intentional with creating relationships with others. Establish deep roots, know who you are, but if we want to stand tall we must go wide.
The fires of life are required for future growth.
As the evening wore on and I dove deeper into my reading of dendrology (the study of trees – you’re welcome), I discovered another secret of how the sequoia grows so large and lives so long. The tree’s bark is fire-resistant and protects the trees from the inevitable fires of life. Because these trees live so long, at some point, lightening will strike and cause a fire in a sequoia grove. But, because the tree’s bark contains tannic acid, the same stuff used in fire extinguishers, it protects the tree from burning up when the flames come into contact with the trunks of these trees.
While the tree has a way to protect itself from being consumed by fire, it still needs a way to create life. The cones that fall to the ground don’t open on their own, they must be dried out. For years, people tried to prevent fires until they realized that they were actually preventing new sequoias from growing. That’s because fire is one of the only things that will dry up the cones and allow the seeds to germinate. While a grown sequoia is protected from the flames by its bark, fire is a necessity for the tree to be able to give life to something new. It clears the underbrush, allowing more sunlight to reach the ground, and the ashes make good fertilizer for new sequoias to grow.
While we like to avoid the fires in our lives, because trials aren’t comfortable, we need to hold onto the things that will protect us and keep us from being consumed by the fire. And we need to realize that the fires we endure are often the very thing we need in order to give life to something new.