Growing With Fire: Healing Lessons from Sequoias (Travel Log: West US part 3)

Cross section of a sequoia healing process. Each tiny ring represents a year

The trail through Mariposa Grove is no El Capitan. Still, we visited when the shuttle was still closed, so there was a preliminary hike of about a mile with surprising elevation. From the welcome plaza up to the Giant Grizzly, it’s a meander. We continued a few miles further to the Faithful Couple and the Clothespin before looping back. It doesn’t sound like much, but to be fair, I was grateful to be able to do it, seeing as barely three years ago I was considering a knee operation.

At the Mariposa Grove Welcome Plaza is a cross-section of a sequoia tree, and you can see the place where the tree was damaged and how it grew around the damage. Sequoia trees have a fire-resistant outer bark. But if, for instance, lightning strikes the tree (which happens quite often, it turns out, as they are pretty darn tall), there is damage to the outer bark, and the tree is exposed. The trees do a remarkable job growing around fire (and human) damage, which is one of the reasons they are still alive: some of the trees we visited sprouted before the Roman Empire.

Not only do the sequoia trees resist fire, they require fire to reproduce. The sequoia acorns only open after being subjected to heat, such as a forest fire. The fire clears space in the underbrush for the seeds to sprout and thrive.

While looking (way) up to these ancient red trees can (and did) evoke an existential crisis, this is not the topic of this blog. One tree we saw at the Mariposa Grove was The Tunnel Tree. In 1895, the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company hired woodcarvers to expand a lightning scar into a tunnel large enough to fit a stagecoach through. The tree served in this way as a tourist attraction until 1932, when we apparently thought better of it. Visiting the still-living tree, we saw the generations of people who carved their names on the walls of the “tunnel”, but we also saw new growth around the cut. These ancient living giants withstand damage—natural and human—and live for thousands of years.

As I mentioned, three years ago, I had a knee injury. I injured it jogging, not doing anything extreme or unusual. I spent weeks on the couch, icing the stupid knee. Once I regained the ability to walk, I used a brace all the time, trying to protect it. The weeks of being immobilised were still vivid in my head, and I was scared to re-injure it. At some point, the orthopaedic doctor said that using the brace had stopped being useful. My over-protectiveness was impeding the healing process. The physiotherapist reassured me that a low pain (up to three out of ten) that stops once I stop the activity is not going to hurt it, and it’s “the kind of pain we need to push through”. I gingerly started to trust my knee again and challenge it more in order to strengthen it. Now, I can hike again, but it’s still a daily negotiation of how active I can be with my knees.

It was a difficult process. I grew up with the idea that being weak is just about the worst thing you can do. And taking care of myself was the greatest weakness in my head for some reason. I flagellated myself constantly for being lazy and unproductive. However, my knee injury taught me that injuries do not make us weak. If anything, learning to care for ourselves—physically but also mentally and spiritually—makes us stronger, better able to deal with the rest of the knocks life will inevitably provide us.

In the first phase of my injury, the model of kintsugi was a useful metaphor. Instead of hiding the cracks, I learned to realise that they make me who I am. The breaks are a part of my (hi)story. It’s still something I’m learning to do, and I think it’s an important stage of healing. But a vase, even one that is repaired with gold, evokes caution. Humans don’t do well when we are treated (or we treat ourselves) like porcelain. I learned that lesson while navigating parenthood. While I’d happily take all of my children’s difficulties on myself, that doesn’t help them grow and learn. Unlike vases, adversity makes humans stronger.

This is where the Sequoia Tree Model comes in. Instead of wallowing in the damage, the tree grows around it, protecting the tender side until the fire-resistant bark grows around it, making the tree wider, more stable, stronger. I’m not expecting to live thousands of years (although, think of all the books I’d be able to read!), but I also heal much faster than the sequoia trees.

As I grow, I find that the daily negotiation is one of balancing the two approaches: honouring my wounds but also doing the work to grow around them. Kai Cheng Thom wrote: “We ran like blood running through the veins of history into the roots of the trees that rise from this land.” Those words connected the two ideas for me. Our breaks are part of our history, but they are also an opportunity for us to grow more stable, stronger. We grow stronger when we accept our breaks and use them as leverage to learn new things about ourselves.