Climate Series: The General Sherman Tree, finding inner strength

Standing: Portrait of the General Sherman.

Some of you may recognize this tree, if you’ve ever visited Sequoia National Park in California. It is one of the ancient redwoods of North America, over 2500 years old, the largest currently living tree, by volume, in the world. It is named for the American Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman. And it is one of the US’s natural treasures living under threat from climate change.

In 2021, staff and scientists of the National Park Service rushed to protect the General Sherman tree and many other giant redwoods when the KNP Complex wildfire burned through Sequoia National Park. Now, redwoods are adapted to fire and even depend on seasonal burnings to release their seeds. But climate change is making wildfires more frequent and more intense every year, and the 2021 fires were beyond anything recorded in the park before. No one knew if the trees could withstand the heat that was destroying everything else.

But survive they did, with bells on. In fact, after the fire, dormant buds of new branches, some dormant more than 1000 years, awakened and sprouted, among other amazing demonstrations of resilience and adaptation.

Faced with the relentless onslaught of bad news these past several years, I thought of the redwoods, and how nature provides inspiring and encouraging examples for every occasion. Adapt and thrive is the message here.

I believe that humanity has the inner strength to get through our challenges, much as the trees survived the fires of 2021. The struggle is far from over, but they are still standing, and so are we, still able to choose a better way forward.

I made this work to celebrate that strength. It belongs to my ongoing series on climate change. And of all the great trees, I chose to portray the General Sherman because, after all, he triumphed through fire, too, didn’t he?

-Jen