Walking Trees is a series in which I am examining tree migration, and/or tenacity, in various environments and through climate change.

Inheritance: the land we call our own

In a recent trip to Vancouver, BC, I found giant Red Western Cedar nurse stumps, so called because years after the tree was cut down the rotting stump becomes a nutrient rich become home for, and nurse seedlings and saplings through many years, until they are spent.  The new trees reach their roots down into the stump and down the outside of the stump too, there digging into the dirt and claiming the old stump space.  When the nurse stump rots away completely and the freely given nutrients are depleted, the once parasitic tree is left on it’s own spindly rooted legs to survive.  The nurse stump is a metaphor for our own inheritance of this earth.