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The Lives of Trees and the Lives of Men: February

We have so much to do with human nature in February, in connection with the celebration of the birthdays of great men, it suggested for this chapter some comparison between the lives of trees and the lives of men; among other things, about how trees write their autobiographies, as great men have so often done, one way or another. Some of these tree autobiographies are quite sad, as in the case of the tree with a broken heart, and the one with a chapter in it about the dreadful fire and the year of the plague. On the other hand, in reading these life records, we shall find that trees have curious traits that are so much like those of human beings they make us smile. For example, we shall learn that at a certain average age for their families, they stop growing taller, and then, usually after they get to middle age, begin getting larger around the waist -- just as men are so apt to do if they don't keep up their gym work. We shall not only see that this is so but why it is so; and why trees lose the keen appetite of youth with advancing years. I'm sorry to say I shall also have to tell that all trees have a tendency to grow intolerant -- that's the forester's own word, "intolerant" -- as they grow in age, while others are just naturally born that way.

I used to think that intolerance was confined to mankind! I. SOME STRANGELY HUMAN TRAITS IN TREES But don't you think it will make interesting reading? Moreover, as I just finished saying in the January chapter, everything about the nature of trees is a part of the science and art of forestry, and you can't get along with trees, any more than you can with people, unless you know something about their dispositions and their ways; and the more you know the better. Take this matter of intolerance. The word doesn't mean quite the same thing, to be sure, when applied to trees as it does when we are speaking of human beings, but there is a striking similarity in the nature of "intolerance" and its bad results among trees as among men. Among human beings an intolerant person is one who doesn't want to share the light of truth with other people. Always, to his way of thinking, he is not only entitled to all the light there is on a given subject, but he believes that he has it already; that wisdom shall die with him, as poor Job said to his opinionated friends, Bildad the Shuhite, and the rest. In the world of the forest an intolerant tree is one that will not willingly share the sunlight with its neighbors; or, if it is compelled to do so, gets grouchy about it and so doesn't amount to much. Such trees also remind me of the folks that always want to have the front seat and to be seen of men; particularly when I think of it in the language of forestry: