Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And today's episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: a travel episode. That's, of course a broad category that
Speaker 2: we're sometimes asked to consider. And since we've already done
Speaker 2: more specific episodes on say, the psychology of travel, like
Speaker 2: why do we travel, what does the travel do to
Speaker 2: the brain, and so forth, we decided to turn our
Speaker 2: attention instead to topics that invited travel. You know that
Speaker 2: maybe even sort of summoned an itinerary or a bucket
Speaker 2: list in the mind of the listener. Certainly get in
Speaker 2: touch with an actual travel agent or travel coordinator if
Speaker 2: you need a book flights based on anything we discussed here.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, there are many reasons to travel.
Speaker 2: To visit friends and family, to take in culture and cuisine,
Speaker 2: to visit natural wonders, and of course to experience various
Speaker 2: ecosystems while we still can. And I was thinking about
Speaker 2: all of this during recent travels with my family and
Speaker 2: kind of landed on a focus for this episode. Sacred
Speaker 2: trees of the world, often old and or ancient trees
Speaker 2: that instantly set our minds and perhaps our spirits as well,
Speaker 2: into motion. I don't know if you've had this experience, Joe,
Speaker 2: when you've been around you know, big trees, old trees,
Speaker 2: novel trees, and so forth.
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of trees. I can easily get
Speaker 3: to thinking of trees as sacred just in their generic form.
Speaker 3: Like a forest is a place that feels like a
Speaker 3: church to me. You know, I like to be surrounded
Speaker 3: by trees. There's a part of me that feels a
Speaker 3: little I don't know, I get my hackles up a
Speaker 3: bit when there are no trees around, when I'm just
Speaker 3: in like an empty field. I don't know if that
Speaker 3: bothers you in the same way it does bother me.
Speaker 3: It really does, like I need some vertical things around me.
Speaker 3: I assume that's a fairly common experience. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I have respect for their power as well. I
Speaker 3: don't remember if we ever talked about this on the show,
Speaker 3: but you know, there was a week last summer, not
Speaker 3: this year, but the year before where a huge old
Speaker 3: tree in our neighbor's yard fell down, took out the
Speaker 3: power lines, and it was like you know, it was
Speaker 3: a long time coming back from that. There was a
Speaker 3: large storm, and of course Atlanta has a lot of
Speaker 3: trees in it, so you know, things were falling down
Speaker 3: all over the place, many people affected. But yeah, it
Speaker 3: just kind of reminds you that there are there are
Speaker 3: these wooden gods all around you, these giant, giant beings
Speaker 3: that are alive and going through life cycles of their own.
Speaker 3: You don't always notice it, but some of them are
Speaker 3: young and growing, and some of them are old and ailing,
Speaker 3: and some of them are covered in parasites, and others
Speaker 3: are you know, getting stronger by the day. And there's
Speaker 3: a kind of plant drama that we miss out on
Speaker 3: because we're not really attuned to its frequency. It's happening
Speaker 3: usually on a timescale that we're not very sensitive too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's this sense that they are divine beings
Speaker 2: and you don't want to invoke their wrath, but also
Speaker 2: we benefit from their shade and their comfort, and you know,
Speaker 2: and they're just great to be around. We lost several
Speaker 2: big trees in the immediate vicinity here in part due
Speaker 2: to the recent storms, but also I think kind of
Speaker 2: the aftermath of those storms, I believe I was looking
Speaker 2: at an article in the AJAC having to do with, like,
Speaker 2: you know, insurance companies becoming more strict about large trees
Speaker 2: and overarching limbs and so forth for insurance policies on
Speaker 2: homes and so At any rate, there are a number
Speaker 2: of big trees that I'm just accustomed to seeing that
Speaker 2: are no longer there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when a big tree falls, when it falls naturally
Speaker 3: or when it gets cut down, you know, just because
Speaker 3: it's looming, I do feel that as a missing presence,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's like somebody has gone out of
Speaker 3: my life. You get used to the canopy and their presence.
Speaker 3: It does change the landscape. So yeah, that kind of
Speaker 3: thing actually does. It affects me a lot when trees
Speaker 3: are gone. But to come to the idea of sacred trees,
Speaker 3: when you suggested this as an episode topic, I thought
Speaker 3: it was really cool, and I thought it was also
Speaker 3: interesting how it can be taken a couple of different ways, right,
Speaker 3: because when you think of a sacred tree, you could
Speaker 3: be thinking of a specific tree, like maybe a really
Speaker 3: beautiful tree, or a really old tree, a really giant tree,
Speaker 3: a specific tree or specific grove of trees that people
Speaker 3: go to, and maybe that specific place has meaning to people,
Speaker 3: or you could be thinking about a kind of tree
Speaker 3: that has a kind of sacred significance in say a
Speaker 3: culture or mythology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, there are various ways to think about it.
Speaker 2: And then we'll get into examples of how like the
Speaker 2: sacred nature of a given variety of tree or maybe
Speaker 2: even individual trees. You know, it can vary over time,
Speaker 2: it can certainly wane, and then it has to be
Speaker 2: relearned and so forth. So humans have a law history
Speaker 2: of seeing the sacred in trees. Certainly, tree symbols go
Speaker 2: way back. We have various examples of you know, the
Speaker 2: likes of world trees bridging Earth to the cosmos and
Speaker 2: so forth. So pretty much anywhere you go, especially if
Speaker 2: there are large trees of some sort there are there's
Speaker 2: there's gonna be some sort of tradition, and so you
Speaker 2: really could chart your travels based entirely on the big trees.
Speaker 2: To be clear, this is not quite what we do,
Speaker 2: but I now that I think back on it. Pretty
Speaker 2: much anywhere we travel, we often end up checking out
Speaker 2: really cool trees. You know, It's like it's it's often
Speaker 2: on the itinerary. If there's some sort of you know,
Speaker 2: nature based attraction. There's a good chance they'll be an
Speaker 2: interesting tree. So we have sought out trees in various
Speaker 2: travel destinations before, So in this episode we're going to
Speaker 2: look at at least a couple of examples of sacred
Speaker 2: trees of the world. We are not going to cover
Speaker 2: all of them. That would take far more than even
Speaker 2: a few episodes. But hey, if listeners enjoy our treatment
Speaker 2: here today, this is something we can perhaps come back
Speaker 2: to in the future. So for our first destination, I
Speaker 2: want to bring you to the western Sierra Nevada. This
Speaker 2: is in California here in the United States, to see
Speaker 2: the giant Sequoia trees, also known as the giant redwood. Specifically,
Speaker 2: the species we're talking about here is Sequoia dendron gigantium,
Speaker 2: and there are two related trees in the same subfan family,
Speaker 2: and I'll mention these as well. I think as we've
Speaker 2: received the coast redwood or coastal redwood or California redwood
Speaker 2: Sequoia simper veins. These are also giant trees. And then
Speaker 2: there's the don redwood or meta sequoia. This is the
Speaker 2: shortest of the redwoods, but I think still a big
Speaker 2: tree by most other measurements. So again, in their natural habitat,
Speaker 2: you'll find the giant sequoia on the western slopes of
Speaker 2: the Sierra Nevada Mountain range of California. As their name implies,
Speaker 2: they are among the largest trees in the world. There
Speaker 2: are several different ways to decide on how the honors
Speaker 2: of giant tree biggest tree are divvied out, But if
Speaker 2: you focus purely on raw height, trunk volume, limb volume,
Speaker 2: or bark thickness among currently living trees, the giant sacquoya
Speaker 2: is absolutely have it. Though to be clear, just over
Speaker 2: the last century, humans have cut down some trees of
Speaker 2: various species that would be considered the tallest today if
Speaker 2: they were still alive, and another caveat if those historic
Speaker 2: measurements were accurate to begin with.
Speaker 3: Ah okay, so some people in the past were like, Hey,
Speaker 3: this might be the biggest tree ever. Let's cut it
Speaker 3: down to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's a long There are multiple examples of
Speaker 2: that that going on, you know, where it's a big tree,
Speaker 2: let's cut it down. We've got to we've gotta tell
Speaker 2: the rest of the country about this. The way to
Speaker 2: do that is to go ahead and cut it down
Speaker 2: and get a nice big sample on it and send
Speaker 2: it out. Let it travel around from city to city. Now,
Speaker 2: according to the National Park Service, the two largest giant
Speaker 2: sequoias in the world are the General Sherman Tree and
Speaker 2: the General Grant Tree. These are the names, obviously we
Speaker 2: give the trees. They didn't choose to be named after
Speaker 2: what are to them very recent human beings. Both of
Speaker 2: these can be found in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
Speaker 2: I had the chance to visit these parks on a
Speaker 2: recent trip with my family. We went out to California.
Speaker 2: I got to experience these amazing organisms up close or
Speaker 2: as close as you know you're allowed to get to them.
Speaker 2: And as the National Park Service points out, these are
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like this with a lot of things
Speaker 2: in nature. It's this is the way it is with say,
Speaker 2: the Grand Canyon. You can look at a picture, but
Speaker 2: it's another thing to experience it. To be there and
Speaker 2: take in the vastness, the emptiness of it is just
Speaker 2: an entirely different experience. And it's absolutely the same thing
Speaker 2: with these massive giants sequoia trees. You look at a
Speaker 2: picture and yeah, they look big, but you're often seeing
Speaker 2: them next to other gigantic trees. There'll be people in
Speaker 2: the shot as well, but you can't always completely grasp
Speaker 2: how big they are. But when you're there, there's just
Speaker 2: no denying it. I mean, it is like this, we
Speaker 2: compare it to a cathedral, but it's even grander than that.
Speaker 3: Yes, as far as I know, I've never seen a
Speaker 3: giant sequoia in person, but I have been to a
Speaker 3: coastal redwood forest, so not exactly the same, but very similar.
Speaker 3: Years ago, my wife and I we were visiting family
Speaker 3: on a trip to southwest Oregon, so we were in
Speaker 3: a fairly secluded area around the Rogue River Siskiyou National
Speaker 3: Forest in Oregon. One day we just drove down over
Speaker 3: the state border into northern California and spent the day
Speaker 3: walking around in the redwood trees. And yeah, absolutely marvelous experience.
Speaker 3: It's hard to know exactly how to describe it. I
Speaker 3: like your comparison to a cathedral rob not just in
Speaker 3: the more abstract sense that it feels sacred, but in
Speaker 3: kind of specific sensory qualities. There's a sense in which
Speaker 3: you feel enclosed, but enclosed in a kind of vast
Speaker 3: and powerful space, not like a small room, but like
Speaker 3: a cathedral. You know, there's a vaulted canopy over you,
Speaker 3: these trees going up so high. There's a sense in
Speaker 3: which sound is kind of changed in these forests. That
Speaker 3: also reminds me of the well, I don't know here,
Speaker 3: probably less like the sounds of a cathedral, which are
Speaker 3: a bit more echoey with all the stone. I think
Speaker 3: there's more damping of the sound in the forest. But
Speaker 3: still there's something in common there, kind of an ability
Speaker 3: to hear indistinct murmuring all around you, you know, just
Speaker 3: this just this kind of drone that lends itself well
Speaker 3: to achieving a peaceful state of mind. Also smells, I
Speaker 3: remember thinking, you know, there are smells of I guess
Speaker 3: just decomposing wood and all the normal things of life
Speaker 3: going on in this forest. That reminded me of the
Speaker 3: smells you might get in a church or in a
Speaker 3: high church kind of cathedral, like incense and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no burning incense around these trees, by the way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, these things are massive, like for example, the
Speaker 2: largest giants saquoias, are said to be as tall as
Speaker 2: twenty six story buildings, and to put that in you
Speaker 2: compare that to an actual building. The historic Flat Iron
Speaker 2: Building in New York City is twenty two stories tall,
Speaker 2: and unlike a skyscraper, these trees are alive and growing.
Speaker 2: Giants Saccoia Is, according to the NPS, produce roughly forty
Speaker 2: cubic feet or one cubic meter of wood each year,
Speaker 2: so they just continue to bulk up. And you know,
Speaker 2: you can compare that to like how many trees worth
Speaker 2: of wood it's growing per year. The General Sherman tree
Speaker 2: currently stands at two hundred and seventy four point nine
Speaker 2: feet tall, has a ground circumference of one hundred and
Speaker 2: two point six feet and a trunk volume of fifty
Speaker 2: five hundred and eight cubic feet. General Grant is a
Speaker 2: little shorter but has a slightly larger ground circumference.
Speaker 3: I wonder why they named the bigger one after Sherman
Speaker 3: and the slightly smaller one after Grant. I guess Sherman
Speaker 3: the man was I assumed taller than Grant, just imagining
Speaker 3: from the way they look in pictures. I mean, I
Speaker 3: never seen him side by side.
Speaker 2: They neither could take this as a slight. These are trees.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, Grant was his boss. They should have
Speaker 3: made the bigger one Grant.
Speaker 2: The thing is like, not only do they dwarf us
Speaker 2: in space in size, but they also dwarf us in time.
Speaker 2: And I think that's another reason that it's easy to
Speaker 2: think of them in terms of the sacred. And these
Speaker 2: are giants that are especially long lived. They are thought
Speaker 2: to live more than three thousand years in some cases.
Speaker 2: The Grizzly Giant Tree, for example, this is one I
Speaker 2: also got to see. This one is in Yosemite National
Speaker 2: Park's Mariposa Grove. It's one that has this enormously thick
Speaker 2: limb coming out from the side of it, like it
Speaker 2: looks like the tree has developed a giant muscle arm
Speaker 2: and is about to flex. Like it's just it's on
Speaker 2: inspiring and a little frightening because it just doesn't it
Speaker 2: doesn't look stable. But it's been obviously it's been up
Speaker 2: there for a very long time. But this tree in
Speaker 2: particular is thought to be between two thousand and three
Speaker 2: thousand years old, according to the National Park Service. A
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen study put it at two nine hundred and
Speaker 2: ninety five years old.
Speaker 3: That's funny precision. Shouldn't you just say three thousand?
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know you cross the line at
Speaker 2: that point, right, But I mean the exact estimated ages
Speaker 2: of some of these trees has varied over time, as
Speaker 2: you know. Sometimes it's been a lot, a lot greater
Speaker 2: and then they pull back on them. But just assuming
Speaker 2: that we're talking about two thousand, nine hundred ninety five
Speaker 2: years old, I mean, just think about that, this tree
Speaker 2: has potentially lived since what nine to seventy BCE, a
Speaker 2: time when pharaohs and Old Testament kings walk the earth,
Speaker 2: more than nine centuries before the birth of Christ, almost
Speaker 2: too millennia before the earliest known first contact between Europeans
Speaker 2: and Native North American peoples. You know, our lives, even
Speaker 2: the two hundred and forty eight year history of the
Speaker 2: United States is just a drop in the bucket compared
Speaker 2: to the life span of one of these wooden Leviathans.
Speaker 3: Makes you want to ask it for advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't have any advice to give, like, but
Speaker 2: you know, just keep growing. I guess it's its whole thing.
Speaker 2: And they're pretty. But yeah, these are just such fascinating trees.
Speaker 2: So we could go into great depth about them here,
Speaker 2: but I'm just gonna hit some of the high points.
Speaker 2: One of the big ones, of course, is they drop
Speaker 2: their lower branches as they grow, and this helps to
Speaker 2: afford them resistance against forest fires. And indeed, and I
Speaker 2: believe we've probably discussed this on the show before, wildfires
Speaker 2: are part of their life cycle. Their seed strategy evolved
Speaker 2: alongside periodic fires, so their closed cones hold on to
Speaker 2: their seeds for as much as twenty years, opening up
Speaker 2: when there's that hot, dry air outside brought on by wildfires.
Speaker 2: This allows the seeds to pop out and take advantage
Speaker 2: of those post fire soils and the openness of the
Speaker 2: post fire environment. Okay, and so they're impressive survivors on
Speaker 2: their own without humans protecting them or interfering with them,
Speaker 2: they got by just fine, and thus far they've also
Speaker 2: survived the dangers of human logging and other human cause
Speaker 2: problems in the environment. Part of this, to understand is
Speaker 2: because the giant Sequoia two didn't have as what was
Speaker 2: considered as high a quality of wood as some of
Speaker 2: the competing giants, which maybe helped prevent us from cutting
Speaker 2: them all down. But they remain endangered and protected to
Speaker 2: this day getting into the sacredness of it. You know,
Speaker 2: modern interlopers into these environments certainly would would connect with
Speaker 2: the sacredness of them. There's a sacredness that kind of
Speaker 2: builds up. So Europeans initially began to encounter these trees,
Speaker 2: and you know, individuals may have thought they looked impressive
Speaker 2: or you found something sacred and then but a lot
Speaker 2: of people just saw them as resources to be plundered.
Speaker 2: And then that begins to change over time. But you know,
Speaker 2: gets to the point where the General Grant Tree, for example,
Speaker 2: was dubbed the Nation's Christmas Tree in nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 2: and various dedications and proclamations have taken place in the
Speaker 2: presence of these trees, as if you know, it is
Speaker 2: like sacred American ground upon which you know one should
Speaker 2: be present, you know, where one might make something you know, official,
Speaker 2: and so forth, as if before the eyes of God
Speaker 2: or something. In fact, if you're looking for an example
Speaker 2: of like bipartisan unity in American politics, at least non
Speaker 2: contemporary politics, you can look to multiple examples of past
Speaker 2: US presidents at the very least expressing admiration for the
Speaker 2: great trees, which I guess you know, if I'm going
Speaker 2: to be cynical as far as politics go, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's a pretty safe bet to be like pro
Speaker 2: giant sequoia after a point, right, it would be a
Speaker 2: weird hill to die upon otherwise. And so you have
Speaker 2: past US presidents from both major parties that have expanded
Speaker 2: protection for giants aquoias. So I mean that's pretty cool,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll take that. Also worth noting that in
Speaker 2: May of nineteen forty five, more than five hundred United
Speaker 2: Nations delegates attended the first UN Peace Conference in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: and they gathered at Newer Woods National Monument, home to
Speaker 2: a number of these sequoia simper vans or coastal redwoods
Speaker 2: that we mentioned earlier, as well as some pretty great
Speaker 2: banana slugs, like go for the trees, but stay for
Speaker 2: the banana slugs and you know, the world peace.
Speaker 3: One of my good family friends was a camp counselor
Speaker 3: somewhere out there, and it's like it was like a
Speaker 3: nature camp, and apparently they had some great songs about
Speaker 3: banana slugs the kids liked.
Speaker 2: They're very impressive. Well, we took my son out there
Speaker 2: when he was a lot younger, and he really barely
Speaker 2: cared about the trees, but he was excited to see
Speaker 2: the banana slugs. And we got there early in the morning,
Speaker 2: and at first we did not see any banana slugs,
Speaker 2: and he was about to become very upset at having
Speaker 2: not seen them, and then luckily a park ranger showed
Speaker 2: us one, and then we were like, oh, okay, all
Speaker 2: was saved.
Speaker 3: I think the thing is, you hear banana slug and
Speaker 3: you think it's just a name. Until you see it.
Speaker 3: You don't realize how much like a banana it's gonna look. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely Now. Before the coming of the Europeans, the treaties
Speaker 2: were already held in high, even sacred regard, though they
Speaker 2: were not called Sequoias. The Europeans selected names seemingly derives
Speaker 2: from that of Cherokee polymath Sequoia, who live seventeen sixty
Speaker 2: seven through eighteen forty three, though this connection is sometimes contested.
Speaker 2: At any rate, the situation may be much like the
Speaker 2: name Yosemite itself, which is derived from actual names in
Speaker 2: the Miwok languages. But itself, the word Yosemite doesn't really
Speaker 2: mean much, you know, It's just like a composite word now,
Speaker 2: Who were the Miwok peoples. They were one of the
Speaker 2: native inhabitants of what is now northern California, and they
Speaker 2: practiced complex landscape and ecosystem management strategies to help ensure
Speaker 2: the the dominance of for them, key acorn producing trees.
Speaker 2: This is something you can learn about if you visit Yosemite.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of really fascinating stuff about how
Speaker 2: they would gather these acorns, process them, save them. It
Speaker 2: was a vital resource for them, and they would do
Speaker 2: things like engage in intentional burns to manage both vegetation
Speaker 2: and game, ensuring the acorns, but also this would tie
Speaker 2: into the management of game that they would hunt as well.
Speaker 2: And they reportedly, and this reporting tends to come from
Speaker 2: Europeans that were at the time at least looking to
Speaker 2: exploit exotic romanticism about Yosemite, they would say that the
Speaker 2: native peoples knew the giant sequoias as Wawona. Wawona is
Speaker 2: also the name of an historic hotel in Yosemite One.
Speaker 2: I've stayed at it a couple of times. It's a
Speaker 2: very interesting historic landmark. But as to what Wowona actually meant,
Speaker 2: Like you see counts that it is referring to the trees.
Speaker 2: There are also accounts that it is referring to owls
Speaker 2: or the sound the hoot of an owl as it
Speaker 2: is heard passing through a grove of these trees. And
Speaker 2: it does seem like there is some sort of connection
Speaker 2: between the owls and the great trees. They have a
Speaker 2: shared sacredness in the tradition, with the owl possibly serving
Speaker 2: as like a spirit guardian of the Great trees. So
Speaker 2: I was looking to read more about this, so I
Speaker 2: turned to a book titled King Sequoia, The Tree That
Speaker 2: inspired a nation created international park System and changed the
Speaker 2: way we think about nature, by William C. Tweed. This
Speaker 2: is a really interesting book. I definitely recommend this for
Speaker 2: anyone out there who wants a deeper dive into the
Speaker 2: history of this tree and how, and as the title indicates,
Speaker 2: the role it has played and sort of the changing
Speaker 2: attitude we've had towards the natural world in the United States.
Speaker 2: But he points out that prior to the Gold Rush
Speaker 2: of the eighteen forties in the eighteen fifties, the domains
Speaker 2: of the Great Trees were largely left alone by Europeans,
Speaker 2: including during the Spanish and Mexican period. Preceding the gold Rush,
Speaker 2: these areas have been mostly left alone to the native
Speaker 2: inhabitants of those regions. But then when the gold rush occurs,
Speaker 2: people come out looking for the gold, tearing up the
Speaker 2: land for the gold, and of course ultimately decimating indigenous
Speaker 2: populations and driving them from their lands. The author here
Speaker 2: points out that nearly all of California's native groups, including
Speaker 2: the Miwok, of course, understood the importance of fire to
Speaker 2: the ecosystem, as we mentioned earlier, and used it to
Speaker 2: manage vegetation and game. And this is interesting in that
Speaker 2: this is a lesson that Europeans and Americans would be
Speaker 2: very slow to realize, to realize that, yes, you can't
Speaker 2: just prevent all wildfires, you have to of course engage
Speaker 2: in strategic, small scale burns, in part because this is
Speaker 2: what the natural environment is accustomed to. Also goes into
Speaker 2: detail about the many steps that were involved in the
Speaker 2: near worship of these great trees in the early twentieth
Speaker 2: century in America. You know, it was very much a
Speaker 2: transition from past attitudes that against all these trees as
Speaker 2: mere resources to plunder like everything else, to this growing
Speaker 2: sense that these trees are special, and then that idea
Speaker 2: seems to sort of it's sort of like, once you
Speaker 2: pull on it, you begin to pull up these other
Speaker 2: ideas and you realize, oh, well, maybe it's not just
Speaker 2: the trees that are sacred, you know, it's the areas
Speaker 2: around the trees. Maybe it's the whole ecosystem that the
Speaker 2: trees are a part of. Maybe it's the natural world
Speaker 2: that is important here and should be conserved. However, he
Speaker 2: points out that sadly, in terms of what the indigenous
Speaker 2: people thought specifically about these trees, he said that we've
Speaker 2: lost quote most of the experiences, tales, and wisdom of
Speaker 2: the first peoples to have walked in the shadows and
Speaker 2: sunlit reflections of these mountain forests. But he still points
Speaker 2: out that from what we do know, from what was
Speaker 2: passed down and remembered, quote, they perceived the trees as
Speaker 2: they did everything else that surrounded them, as part of
Speaker 2: a complex web of existence that had spiritual value embedded
Speaker 2: in every element. And of course, if the Miwok saw
Speaker 2: the trees as part of a grander world of interconnected
Speaker 2: spirits in nature, then you know, perhaps we can see
Speaker 2: the giant sequoias and their ken as like the prime
Speaker 2: deities that again steadily helped to reveal the sacred aspects
Speaker 2: of nature to a wider American public. You know, that
Speaker 2: leads you know, early conservationists like John Muir himself to
Speaker 2: refer to the trees as the noblest of the noble
Speaker 2: race and noblest of God's trees. So I left this research,
Speaker 2: you know, wanting to know more about how indigenous people
Speaker 2: specifically thought about the great Sequoias, the giant Sequoias. It
Speaker 2: sounds like a lot of those traditions have been lost,
Speaker 2: but it is interesting how though those traditions were decimated
Speaker 2: and lost, there is this sense of sort of like
Speaker 2: rediscovering them in the history of conservationists in America, realizing
Speaker 2: that the trees should be protected and and should be conserved.
Speaker 2: But again that's it's very much a transition. There's certainly
Speaker 2: a phase in between there where we have a lot
Speaker 2: of like the cutting down of these trees or the
Speaker 2: drilling of great holes in them so you can drive
Speaker 2: an automobile through them. And I guess, you know, part
Speaker 2: of that is like we've got to show people how
Speaker 2: big these are. Let's put a car next to it. No,
Speaker 2: let's drive a car through it, you know, without fully
Speaker 2: realizing that, you know, how destructive that is.
Speaker 3: I was just reminded of seeing that photo when you
Speaker 3: said it. I don't know how common that is. Is
Speaker 3: that something that happened to a bunch of trees or
Speaker 3: is it just like that one famous one, the driving
Speaker 3: the car through.
Speaker 2: I mean, oh, I mean there there have been a
Speaker 2: couple of different examples of this. National Park Service actually
Speaker 2: has a has a page about this you can look up,
Speaker 2: called the Myth of the Tree you Can Drive Through
Speaker 2: and it covers, like some of a couple of the
Speaker 2: actual examples of trees that had been tunneled. One of
Speaker 2: the ones that they have pictured in this article is
Speaker 2: in the Suqua National Park and it's a tree that
Speaker 2: had already fallen and then they had dug out an
Speaker 2: area to drive a tree through. But unfortunately, like live
Speaker 2: trees were also tunneled. Yeah, the Wawona tree is one
Speaker 2: that they write in this article stood for eighty eight summers,
Speaker 2: but then eventually it fell during a severe winter between
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight and nineteen sixty nine. And part of this,
Speaker 2: of course, is that when you tunnel a tree, you
Speaker 2: weaken the tree, so there you go. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: not something that is currently done. Now. I want to
Speaker 2: add an important note on the Mewook people. We've been
Speaker 2: speaking about them in an historic context here, who they
Speaker 2: were when Europeans first encountered them, and what they lost
Speaker 2: in terms of life, culture, and then so stroll land
Speaker 2: because of that contact. But it's important to stress that
Speaker 2: the Miwook did not vanish, and they the indigenous people
Speaker 2: of central California, still largely reside there on five rancherias
Speaker 2: under tribal leadership, as well as elsewhere in California. Their
Speaker 2: access to ancestral lands in Yosemite, i'm to understand, has
Speaker 2: improved quite a bit in recent years, though there's obviously
Speaker 2: a long way to go there. So those are the
Speaker 2: giants squoias. So we have visited California. Where are we
Speaker 2: off to next, Joe?
Speaker 3: Well, the tree I wanted to talk about is is
Speaker 3: one I've never seen in person before, but I think
Speaker 3: probably you have because you've been to the place it grows.
Speaker 3: So this is a tree that is found in Hawaii,
Speaker 3: and for centuries it has been an important part of
Speaker 3: Hawaiian culture, both in a practical sense as a source
Speaker 3: of wood used to make a variety of objects, but
Speaker 3: then also in a sacred sense. For its role in
Speaker 3: Hawaiian religion and mythology, this tree is known as the
Speaker 3: Ohea lahua. The scientific nomenclature is Metrocederos polymorpha. So I
Speaker 3: was going to start by trying to describe what an
Speaker 3: ohe lahua looks like, but that's a kind of complicated
Speaker 3: proposition because the species name, again is polymorpha, which means
Speaker 3: many forms or many shapes, and that is quite appropriate
Speaker 3: to describe this plant, which, depending on circumstances, can change
Speaker 3: the color of its flowers. They can be cherry red,
Speaker 3: that's the most common version you'll see, but also pink
Speaker 3: or even lemon yellow. It can change the size and
Speaker 3: shape of its leaves, and it can vary drastically in
Speaker 3: its overall size and growth pattern. So sometimes the Ohee
Speaker 3: la hua is a small shrub you might see projecting
Speaker 3: from a fresh black lava field, or sometimes it is
Speaker 3: a tree more than fifty feet tall in a dense
Speaker 3: forest of many of the same tree. So it takes
Speaker 3: many forms. It can be a shrub, can be a tree,
Speaker 3: and in its tree form, this species is the most
Speaker 3: abundant of Hawaii's native trees. Going back centuries, the wood
Speaker 3: of the Ohelahua has been used by the people of Hawaii,
Speaker 3: especially for sacred and religious purposes. It's been used to
Speaker 3: make tools like wooden beaters that are used for producing kappa,
Speaker 3: a traditional textile of Hawaii, but it's also been used
Speaker 3: to make things like statues for religious purposes, representations of
Speaker 3: gods and other spiritual beings. So Rabbi included some pictures
Speaker 3: for you to look at here in the outline. One
Speaker 3: thing that's very notable about the blossoms of the ohela
Speaker 3: Hua is that they have these many projecting stamens, so
Speaker 3: they can look kind of like a sea anemone.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I do remember these. These are quite beautiful.
Speaker 2: And then you also share some images of the full
Speaker 2: sized trees with that are kind of I guess you
Speaker 2: might describe these as kind of like veining. There's a
Speaker 2: sense of like veining upward, or it's almost like the
Speaker 2: shape of roots growing into the sky. I don't know.
Speaker 2: This feels insufficient, but it's one of the one of
Speaker 2: the aspects of the forest of why that certainly resonated
Speaker 2: with me a lot when I was there be it,
Speaker 2: you know, in the botanical garden situation, or just driving,
Speaker 2: you know, across the islands. You just see these beautiful
Speaker 2: trees and they're just like they're unlike anything I'm accustomed
Speaker 2: to seeing back home.
Speaker 3: Obviously. Yeah, it's funny because in a couple of the
Speaker 3: myths I was reading that incorporate this tree, the tree
Speaker 3: is described in some sense as like gnar oled or ugly,
Speaker 3: but in other cases it's regarded specifically for its beauty,
Speaker 3: and certainly the blossoms are always thought of as particularly beautiful.
Speaker 3: And I guess those two different ways of describing it
Speaker 3: come together in one of the last myths I'm going
Speaker 3: to get to in this section. But so, yeah, you
Speaker 3: can see a diversity of forms. If you look up
Speaker 3: images again, it's the Ohea lehua. There's some unusual characters
Speaker 3: in the Anglicized version of the name, but I think
Speaker 3: if you just type in O h I A l
Speaker 3: e h u A you can find it. But anyway,
Speaker 3: these forms include full sized trees with woody trunks, and
Speaker 3: also just these particularly lovely red blossomed shrubs that you
Speaker 3: see growing up from cracks in new volcanic rocks. Sometimes
Speaker 3: by themselves. They're known for beings among the first plants
Speaker 3: to sort of fill in and colonize an area that
Speaker 3: has newly been paved over by a volcanic eruption.
Speaker 2: And that's always picturesque. It's like the hang in there
Speaker 2: baby signed with the cat, you know. It's like like,
Speaker 2: look at this, Even in the midst of of all
Speaker 2: of this volcanic desolation, there's re growth, Like this is
Speaker 2: a cycle we're witnessing here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I was reading in multiple sources that the
Speaker 3: Ohee Lahua is a type of sacred tree within Hawaiian tradition.
Speaker 3: But what was interesting to me the more I got
Speaker 3: into it was the diversity of ways that this sacred
Speaker 3: status was defined. That there are so many different connection
Speaker 3: points between this species of tree and traditional stories and
Speaker 3: beliefs of the Hawaiian people, for example, gods and spiritual
Speaker 3: beings embodied by or represented by the tree. This is
Speaker 3: not a case where you will get one clear and
Speaker 3: unique association between one deity and one plant species. Instead,
Speaker 3: I've found so many stories in which this tree is
Speaker 3: the embodiment of or is associated with so many different
Speaker 3: named spiritual beings in Hawaiian religion. So I just want
Speaker 3: to list some of the things I've come across to
Speaker 3: give a sense of this diversity. One thing is I
Speaker 3: was listening to a video interview with a scholar, a
Speaker 3: professor named Kalna Silva, who is at the University of Hawaii, Hilo,
Speaker 3: who specializes in Hawaiian language and history, and he says
Speaker 3: that the Ohia Lahua is what he calls the physical
Speaker 3: manifestation of a couple of divine figures he names he
Speaker 3: Iyaka and Laka. So I went looking for more on
Speaker 3: these two connections. First of all, Laka is a name
Speaker 3: referring actually to multiple figures within Hawaiian religion. One is
Speaker 3: a goddess of the growing forest as well as well
Speaker 3: as of hula dancing, and another is a member of
Speaker 3: the assemblage of cou gods Ku gods, which I'll say
Speaker 3: more about in a minute. But this Laca god is
Speaker 3: also associated with hula dancing. So both of these associated
Speaker 3: with hula dancing, which you might have some awareness of
Speaker 3: as a form of dance, but it's not just a
Speaker 3: form of dance. One thing that's important to understand about
Speaker 3: hula is that it is narrative in so it's a
Speaker 3: dance that tells stories about Hawaiian history and mythology and
Speaker 3: so forth. The other entity that Silva mentions as being
Speaker 3: embodied in the tree is he Iyaka, who is an
Speaker 3: interesting figure, the daughter of the goddess Halmea and the
Speaker 3: god Kane, and also the younger sister of the volcano
Speaker 3: goddess Pele. So there is a famous story about the
Speaker 3: two sisters Pele and he Iyaka, which exists in apparently
Speaker 3: a lot of different forms. This will sort of be
Speaker 3: a theme today, many different forms, but I'll give an
Speaker 3: abridged summary of one form of the story. This form
Speaker 3: is hosted on the National Parks page for Hawaii Volcano's
Speaker 3: National Park. It starts off with Pele. She lives up
Speaker 3: on the volcanic mountain of Kilauea, and once Pele had
Speaker 3: a lover named Lohiao, who lived on a different island
Speaker 3: from her, on the island of Kawaii. Pele wanted to
Speaker 3: see her lover, but he was so far away, so
Speaker 3: she asked her sisters to go to the other island
Speaker 3: and bring him back to her, and only her youngest sister,
Speaker 3: he Iyaka, agreed. And while he Iyaka is away on
Speaker 3: this mission, Pele promised that she would take good care
Speaker 3: of what he Iyaka cared about the most, which was
Speaker 3: a sacred grove of Ohia trees and of he Iaka's
Speaker 3: best friend Apoe. Unfortunately, when he Eyaka got to the
Speaker 3: other island, she discovered that Pele's lover Lohiao, had died,
Speaker 3: so he Iyaka has to bring him back from the dead,
Speaker 3: which was no easy job. She has to go chasing
Speaker 3: after his spirit which has left his body, but she
Speaker 3: catches it, brings it back, and she's able to resurrect him.
Speaker 3: He Eyaka and the now revived Lohio make the journey
Speaker 3: back to Pel's Island, but with some stops along the way,
Speaker 3: in which he Eyaka has to defend against this guy
Speaker 3: being tempted to betray Pele with another woman. There's like
Speaker 3: a beautiful queen who has some history with Lohio, and
Speaker 3: he Iyaka has to win some kind of game to
Speaker 3: prevent him from from I think the prize that she
Speaker 3: would that the queen would get if she won is
Speaker 3: that Lohio would have to stay with her for a night.
Speaker 3: So he Iyaka is really going above and beyond. She
Speaker 3: raises this guy from the dead keeps him loyal to
Speaker 3: the volcano goddess, but Pele unfortunately gets paranoid and impatient
Speaker 3: her sister has not returned, so she gets angry and
Speaker 3: she burns down he Iyaka's precious Ohea trees, and then
Speaker 3: she also covers he Iyaka's friend Hapoe with molten lava,
Speaker 3: so she's very mad. This in turn makes he Iaka furious,
Speaker 3: so she and Lohioo go to Pele's volcano crater to
Speaker 3: face off against her, and there is a battle involving
Speaker 3: multiple parties and incantations and sorcery. Pele tries to compel
Speaker 3: some of her other relatives to attack them and to
Speaker 3: kill Lohiao, but they sort of hesitate, and in the
Speaker 3: end Pele herself kills her lover Lohiao out of rage,
Speaker 3: and then in revenge for this, he Iyaka she plans
Speaker 3: to destroy Pele. Her plan is she's going to break
Speaker 3: through the crust of the earth, flood the volcano with water,
Speaker 3: and snuff it out. But then at the last moment
Speaker 3: she relents and she does not extinguish her sister's fires
Speaker 3: with the water from below, and they make up and
Speaker 3: they get over their differences, but in the story you
Speaker 3: can see he Iyaka, this powerful divine heroine who has
Speaker 3: all these You know, she has magical powers. She can
Speaker 3: break through the earth to summon waters. She she can
Speaker 3: sort of like see things from afar like, she can
Speaker 3: sort of do everything. And the thing she really loves,
Speaker 3: things she cares about the most apart from her friend,
Speaker 3: is this grove of the ohia Lehua trees. Now I
Speaker 3: was reading in another source, according to a scholar named
Speaker 3: Beatrice Krauss, in a book called Plants in Hawaiian Culture
Speaker 3: from University of Hawaii Press. This is the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one edition of the book. The Ohee Lahua tree is one,
Speaker 3: according to this book, one of the natural forms taken
Speaker 3: by Ku, who is one of the four major gods
Speaker 3: of Hawaiian religion. Ku, in his many manifestations, is a
Speaker 3: male god of war and politics, known as the Snatcher
Speaker 3: of land, but also represents farming and fishing and forests
Speaker 3: and a number of different things. So Ku is known
Speaker 3: to take a many animal shapes, including the Hawaiian hawk
Speaker 3: and the shape of a shark, but also plant forms,
Speaker 3: notably the Ohee Lahua tree. And so I was reading
Speaker 3: more about this in another book, a book called Hawaiian
Speaker 3: Mythology by Martha Warren Beckwith this was University of Hawaii Press.
Speaker 3: This is a much older book, but this was the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one edition of it. And in this book
Speaker 3: she talks about how the Ohee Lahua tree form of
Speaker 3: Coup is one of what she calls the coup gods,
Speaker 3: which could be interpreted either as sort of subordinate gods
Speaker 3: who serve under Coup and are worshiped under his auspices,
Speaker 3: or derivative manifestations of Coup himself. And many of these are,
Speaker 3: in her words quote, functional gods of the forest or
Speaker 3: sea upon whom depended success in some special craft. So
Speaker 3: there are number of examples listed in this text. Beckweth
Speaker 3: identifies a god named ku Ohilaka as an example here,
Speaker 3: one of the many gods who was worshiped, for example,
Speaker 3: by canoe builders for playing some role in the construction
Speaker 3: of a canoe. In this case, he was, for one thing,
Speaker 3: a god of rain in the forest, but also the
Speaker 3: god embodied in the wood of the Ohee Lahua tree,
Speaker 3: which was one of the sources of hardwood building material
Speaker 3: available in the upland forest. Also you can hear the
Speaker 3: name Laca in Kuka ohel Laca. This is the male
Speaker 3: god Laka, which was one of the entities I mentioned
Speaker 3: earlier as a patron of the hula dance art form
Speaker 3: in which history and important stories were stored and then expressed. Now,
Speaker 3: beck With in her text mentions a really interesting story
Speaker 3: connecting this Laca, this version of the coup god Laka,
Speaker 3: to a particular cave in Hawaii and to the ohe
Speaker 3: Lahua tree. So she says that there's a particular cave
Speaker 3: in Hawaii where there grows a specific tree of this species,
Speaker 3: and that tree is the preserved body of Laca. Several
Speaker 3: things are said about this tree. One is that it
Speaker 3: only ever has two blossoms at a time, and the
Speaker 3: other is that if you snap a branch off of it,
Speaker 3: blood will flow from the wood. And then Beckwick goes
Speaker 3: on to tell the story of the tree. Up here
Speaker 3: is that I believe it's that Laka and his sister
Speaker 3: Kawa come to Hawaii to live with their spouses, Laka
Speaker 3: and his wife kaa Aw and Kawa with her husband
Speaker 3: in the uplands of the island. So here I'm going
Speaker 3: to read from Beckwith quote When the sister brings vegetable
Speaker 3: food from her garden to her brother at the sea,
Speaker 3: her stingy sister in law pretends that they have no
Speaker 3: fish and gives her nothing but seaweed to take home
Speaker 3: as a relish. In despair at this treatment, Kawa transforms
Speaker 3: her husband and children into rats, and herself into a
Speaker 3: spring of water. Her spirit comes to her brother and
Speaker 3: tells him of her fate. He visits the uplands, recognizes
Speaker 3: the spot as she is directed in the dream, and
Speaker 3: plunging into the spring, is himself transformed into the Lahua tree,
Speaker 3: which we see today. Oh wow, but it doesn't stop there.
Speaker 3: I was talking about the god cou earlier. Ku himself
Speaker 3: is said to be the husband of the goddess Heina
Speaker 3: and here this can also be confusing because there are
Speaker 3: apparently multiple divine figures referred to as Hena, but this
Speaker 3: is one of them, and Ku is the husband of
Speaker 3: the Heinah, who is associated with the ocean, the moon,
Speaker 3: and with female female fertility and motherhood. Now, Beckwith's book
Speaker 3: also lists the goddess Hena as a spiritual being embodied
Speaker 3: by the same tree, in this case as hina ulu Ohea,
Speaker 3: meaning Heina the growing Ohea tree. So this version of
Speaker 3: Hena plays an important role in the genealogies of Hawaiian
Speaker 3: gods as a mother, ancestor, and protector of other important
Speaker 3: characters who figure into various stories. But then Beckwith writes
Speaker 3: quote to both God and goddess, the flowering Ohea is sacred,
Speaker 3: and no one on a visit to the volcano will
Speaker 3: venture to break the red flowers for a wreath or
Speaker 3: pluck leaves or branches on the way thither. Only on return,
Speaker 3: with proper invocations, may the flowers be gathered. A rainstorm
Speaker 3: is the least of the unpleasant results that may follow
Speaker 3: tampering with the sacred Lahua blossoms. And then connecting to that,
Speaker 3: there's one more story that it's sort of along the
Speaker 3: same lines. I've seen this repeated in several places. Once again,
Speaker 3: this involves the fire and volcano goddess Pele as a
Speaker 3: jealous lover. So in this story, there's a gorgeous guy,
Speaker 3: a beautiful dude named Ohea. He's unbelievably good looking, and
Speaker 3: Pele falls in love with him, but he only has
Speaker 3: eyes for a different woman named Lahua. So when Peley's
Speaker 3: affections are spurned, she reacts with envious rage, and she
Speaker 3: transforms Ohea into a gnarled tree, an ugly tree with
Speaker 3: twisted branches. And so the woman Lahua mourns the loss
Speaker 3: of her lover. He's been turned into a tree now,
Speaker 3: But the other gods take pity on her, and they
Speaker 3: use their power to help sort of make things right,
Speaker 3: not fully, but they allow her to join him in form.
Speaker 3: So Lahua becomes the beautiful blossom that grows on ohea branches.
Speaker 3: This way they can be together for all time. But
Speaker 3: as one possible consequence of this story, if you pick
Speaker 3: the flower from the tree, you tear the lovers apart again,
Speaker 3: and then the tears of Lahua and Ohea will fall
Speaker 3: as rain.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Now I mentioned that these trees are known for having hard,
Speaker 3: sturdy wood, and even in their smaller shrub forms, they're
Speaker 3: known for, you know, for flowing into apparently inhospitable environments.
Speaker 3: You know, there'll be some of the first plants growing
Speaker 3: out of the cracks in fresh volcanic rock after interruption.
Speaker 3: So that might kind of give the impression that these
Speaker 3: plants are invincible, but they are not invincible. In fact,
Speaker 3: currently Ohea lehua are threatened by a wide spread fungal disease.
Speaker 3: The phenomenon has been known as rapid ohea death or
Speaker 3: ro D, so named because it can appear that something
Speaker 3: happens to these trees and kills them very fast and
Speaker 3: like a matter of days. According to once ourst I
Speaker 3: was looking at, this is caused by a couple of
Speaker 3: species of fungus which are in the genus serato cistus.
Speaker 3: These fungi can harm the tree greatly, and it's thought
Speaker 3: that they harm the tree by stopping up the tree's
Speaker 3: vascular system. So like you know this, this tree has
Speaker 3: hardy roots that can reach down into you know, the
Speaker 3: cracks and rocks and so forth, and can access water
Speaker 3: wherever it needs to. But this plugs up the vascular system,
Speaker 3: so the water from the roots can't get up to
Speaker 3: the canopy, can't get up to the leaves and the
Speaker 3: tops of the trees, which of course is going to
Speaker 3: first turn them brown and kill the leaves and then
Speaker 3: ultimately kills the whole plant. And so there are conservation
Speaker 3: effort it's ongoing to try to understand this threat and
Speaker 3: counteract it. But this is something that that conservationists and
Speaker 3: and also just people to whom the Ohea Lhua has
Speaker 3: great cultural and religious significance are very aware of and
Speaker 3: having to deal with.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you see this in various examples. You see
Speaker 2: this with the great sequoias as well. You know, we
Speaker 2: look at a tree and it doesn't even have to
Speaker 2: be a giant tree. You know, they're all they're often
Speaker 2: pretty big. They're often bigger than us. But you look
Speaker 2: at a tree and you can often think that by
Speaker 2: virtue of its size, by virtue of the pace of
Speaker 2: its existence, we think of them as being sometimes more
Speaker 2: rugged than they actually are. We don't think that human
Speaker 2: activities can harm them, can interfere them, so we do
Speaker 2: things like, you know, carve our initials into them, or
Speaker 2: tunnel holes through them for novelty automobile photographs and things
Speaker 2: like that, when in reality, you know they are often
Speaker 2: they're often very sensitive to their environment, and sometimes it
Speaker 2: comes down to details like for instance, I I didn't
Speaker 2: mention that the sequoia tree has you know, reasonably shallow
Speaker 2: root systems, and that's one of the reasons that when
Speaker 2: you're around them, there's a lot of emphasis given on
Speaker 2: staying on the path and not you know, walking up
Speaker 2: close to them, because you could damage these roots like
Speaker 2: the thing that is, you know, ancient and rough and tumble,
Speaker 2: and you know, we compare them to giants and grizzly bears.
Speaker 2: You know that there they are, in their own way, fragile,
Speaker 2: and you know we can do great harm to them.
Speaker 2: We can do great arm to the environment, and we
Speaker 2: have to respect it and care for it.
Speaker 3: Trees, like us are both tough and fragile, and you
Speaker 3: have to understand the ways in which we are both.
Speaker 2: But I love these these Hawaiian stories. I love these
Speaker 2: stories of transformation into trees. This is something you see
Speaker 2: echoes of in other traditions as well, sometimes you know,
Speaker 2: for more tragic effects, sometimes for haunting effect. But I
Speaker 2: imagine and it's probably one of the key mythological tropes.
Speaker 2: Like you have world trees, and you also have transformation
Speaker 2: into trees, people and gods and demi gods becoming the tree.
Speaker 2: And I guess maybe you see combinations of the two
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do you think, did we cover all of
Speaker 3: the sacred trees in the world?
Speaker 2: Now? We left a few off? Sadly, yes, we only
Speaker 2: covered two. Fortunately they I think they're connected essentially by
Speaker 2: a direct flight from San Francisco to Hawaii. So if
Speaker 2: you want to turn this into a travel itinerary, this
Speaker 2: one's an easy one. But yes, obviously there are a
Speaker 2: number of sacred trees we didn't get to. I originally
Speaker 2: was going to talk about the body tree the sacred
Speaker 2: fig a bit in this episode, but obviously we ran
Speaker 2: ran out of time, So you know, consider this an
Speaker 2: unofficial part one. If you want to hear more about
Speaker 2: sacred trees in the world, let us know and we'll
Speaker 2: come back with another episode at some point in the
Speaker 2: future talk about the body tree and who knows what else.
Speaker 2: There are a number of great ones in terms of
Speaker 2: just big impressive tree, but also trees that have various
Speaker 2: roles within a given culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are so many. We could do a ten
Speaker 3: part series on this, and it often does get surprisingly
Speaker 3: interesting at how like the botany interacts with the legend
Speaker 3: and mythology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right, so we'll go ahead and close
Speaker 2: this one out, but yeah, let us know if you'd
Speaker 2: like to hear more. If you want to hear us
Speaker 2: speak for the trees some more, we can do so
Speaker 2: in the future. In the meantime, we'll just remind you
Speaker 2: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: On Fridays, we set aside most serious concerners, just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema and let's
Speaker 2: see any other thing we need to mention here. Oh,
Speaker 2: if you're on the Instagrams and you wish to follow
Speaker 2: us STBYM podcast, that's where you'll find us. Keep up
Speaker 2: with some of the episodes coming out. And we haven't
Speaker 2: mentioned this a lot recently, but hey, rate and review
Speaker 2: if you have the power to do so. Wherever you
Speaker 2: listen to us, give us a nice star rating. That
Speaker 2: helps you know, keep things nice and fresh. It's it's
Speaker 2: like putting some fresh flowers in the room, just freshen
Speaker 2: things up nicely, and so we do move ask you
Speaker 2: to remember to do that.
Speaker 3: If you have it all right, huge, thanks as always
Speaker 3: to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would
Speaker 3: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 3: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: Dot com Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.