My final piece of Americana video poetry once again celebrating the Ancients of the Bristlecone pines but this time in a small stand in Great Basin National Park, eastern Nevada. Wheeler Peak is the highest mountain rising out from the desert in the Snake Range. Prometheus was a living member of a population of Bristlecone pine trees growing near the tree line on the lateral moraine in the corrie of the former glacier below Wheeler Peak. In the 1960's it was felled by a student for research purposes and it has subsequently been assessed as being just under 5,000 years old when it was felled and therefore the oldest known non cloned organism. It was named Prometheus after the mythological figure who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man.In this poem I consider the appropriateness of the name given to the tree as its life was stolen in passing its knowledge onto humans.
dendrochronology
Ancients
The Methuselah is the oldest known living tree at 4,854 years. I first heard about the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest from one of the participants of the Landscapes of the Mind Group. These ancient trees inspired his transformational moment and I totally understand why. They are located high in the White Mountains in Inyo County California set against a backdrop of the Sierra Nevada range. They are great twisted caramalised sculptures eking out an existence in this hostile environment, with a growing season of only 45 days a year . Here the science of dendrochronology was founded and still continues to inform us of using the growth rings of the living as well as dead trees ( some are over 12,000 years old) to determine climate change through history as well as help date archaeological sites.