Longevity

There stands the ghost of Bristle-cone Pine, since 4000 years, in the White Mountains, to the north western edge of Death Valley.

Before it heard a voice singing

"Lay down

Your sweet and weary head

Night is falling

You have come to journey's end

Sleep now

And dream of the ones who came before

They are calling

From across a distant shore

Why do you weep?

Why are these tears upon your face?

Soon you will see

All your fears will pass away

Safe in my arms

You are only sleeping....................."***,

It lived for 4767 years. It tells us an 8000 years story.

What made this "Methuselah"(thats what the locals call it, referring to the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, given as 969 years) convince itself upon living for such a long time frame, was it so pleasant than the mythological Heaven, that it couldn't leave the peace and comfort of soil.

I wonder how many millions of years of evolution did it take for a species to convince nature(or the universal collective consciousness) to let it live for 5 millenniums as rarely are the fossils of plants left behind.May be right from the moment of Cambrian explosion.

Five thousand years!, that tree would have seen the birth and death of the Egyptian civilization and many other tribes, it would have seen all of Nature's fury, many religions would have served their time frame and went in to extinction.

If it had memory and could communicate, huh the thought itself fascinates me on how many things it could have revealed. Now, as of the humans knowledge plants don't have any memory of even a single second, then what is the point of living such a life or were the plants too wise... or are humans too young to understand that, or were plants similar to us moving, communicating, having a society but evolved to what we are witnessing today???

All I have is questions, little answers and no solutions.

(***Poem extract from the song, In to the west, Lord of the Rings - Return of the King)