Finding Wisdom among the White Mountain Masters

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
the flying beings, and the sitting beings—even grasses,
to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a
seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

”In some future time, there will be a continent called
America. It will have great centers of power called
such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur,
Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels
such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon
The human race in that era will get into troubles all over
its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of
its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature.”

”The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings
of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth.
My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and
granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that
future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure
the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger:
and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it.”

And he showed himself in his true form of
SMOKEY THE BEAR…

Smokey the Bear Sutra—Gary Snyder

Here is the beginning—not but a tender sapling. Here the rains fell well and the warm season lingered long past its time. Here the sky went dark for many moons from smoke and ash and light became a phantom memory. Here the sky flashed quick and bright, leaving its mark in a deep charred scar. Here the six legged and the eight legged, through yawning bore, made their home. Here, the sun returned—a miracle. These are grouped in spans of abundance, bracketed by equal terms of scarcity. This is where it stayed cold and dry, so cold and dry that the growing season might have been the last. Much was lost then, but what remains is surely grateful for the sacrifice. Then a fire came and took many that were near by, blackening here what was smooth and brown. So has it been and will continue to be as long as soil, sun, rain, and fortune allow it to be so.

The high, arid White Mountain range of what is these days called California stands in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada on the western edge of the Great Basin which seemingly stretches endlessly to the east. In this region, the extremes of geography are matched to the vicissitudes of climate with the lowest point in the North American Continent, Death Valley, bordering the southern end of the range and Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States, westward across the broad Owens Valley. This is an ancient place where extensive outcrops of dolomite were first laid down under the ocean 500 million years ago, then slowly uplifted through time; now sitting well over 14,000 feet in altitude many places. The soil quality is rated as some of the poorest in any of the alpine zones and much of the soil density has been swept away by the extreme conditions leaving little in which roots might take. Less than 10 inches of precipitation comes here annually with much of it in the form of snow that is largely blown away by the continual harsh winds. Lightning storms are frequent and severe. What awaits most life that would attempt settlement here is the slow suffering of exposure and desiccation.

Yet it is among some of the most inhospitable living conditions on the planet that one will find earth’s oldest living inhabitants, Pinus longaeva—the Bristlecone Pine. At a time when the first great civilizations of human kind were forming in Sumer, Egypt, and Crete, many of the trees living among the mountains today were seedlings. Hidden somewhere at an 11,000 foot elevation within the mountain range, the oldest known still living of these ancients, nicknamed Methuselah, resides. Its exact location remains undisclosed to the public as a protection against overexposure and potential vandalism. At 4,838 years old, the tree is the oldest living single organism currently known and documented. To put this immense age into the context of human development, one might consider that the Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest written story we have about the adventures one of the historical kings of Uruk, who would have been a contemporary of the young Methuselah tree that, at the time of his rule around 2650 BCE, would already have been several hundred years old. The biblical namesake of the tree is both a historical and allegorical representation of human longevity as the figure of Methuselah is the oldest person mentioned in the Old Testement. That Methuselah is said to have lived more than 900 years and died in the year of the Great Flood. One possible meaning of his name promises that a great happening will occur upon his death and some have linked his passing to the judgement of God on humans and the cleansing of the Earth through the torential and devestating flooding of the world in which only a select few survived. In a similar way, the Methuselah tree is linked through its naming to both the human desire for longevity and possibly, as we will discover in this essay, to a deep unconscious human prophecy of destruction and—hopefully—renewal through the element of water.

Dendrochronologists have sought out the Bristlecone Pine since the 1950’s in order to “read” the story they tell about the world locked inside their growth rings. They ask what history is embodied in both the dead and living wood that might be available like text for their curiosity (Cohen, 1998, p. 1). Thus were the patterns of rainfall during a decade. Climate shifts were present here and here. The gradient patterns of temperature and soil property were such and so. These are the types of answers one might expect from their inquiries. Some trees might show extreme variation in their growth patterns from ring to ring, indicating what scientists refer to as sensitivity to the limiting environmental factors such as slope gradient, sun, wind, soil properties, temperature, and snow accumulation. Other trees show little or no variation, displaying a distinct complacency over these same factors. As researchers work to uncover the stories that individual or groups of trees reveal of their particular environment, they have also begun to write the story of how these trees have been eyewitness to the passage of time, change in environment, and the increasingly obvious impact of Homo sapiens on the planet. It is possible that the Bristlecone is a perfect personification of the very wisdom we so desperately need to change our destructive relationship to the natural world. Snyder (1990) writes that “each creature is a spirit with intelligence as brilliant as our own” (p.22). When we judge the usefulness of our encounters with the non-human Other based on the narrow standard and peculiarity of human consciousness (p. 21), we are missing the deeper knowledge of a place and its creatures that might further open their wisdom to us. We would do well, as Basso (1996) observes among the Apache traditions, to acquire the relevant body of knowledge allowing us to cultivate the wisdom of a place that might help us to facilitate “the avoidance of harmful events by detecting threatening circumstances when none are apparent” (p. 130-131). Perhaps then we can begin to develop the same qualities of smoothness, resilience, and steadiness of mind that served indigenous cultures in their dealings with their environment. In the same sense that places are “durable receptacles and the knowledge required for wisdom as a lasting supply of water resting securely within them,” the wisdom of place that the Bristlecone Pines carry is a unique intelligence that has relevance to events both regional and historical. “Disciplined mental effort, diligently sustained” and directed toward extracting the wisdom of place says Basso (1996, pp. 138-139), “will eventually give rise to a permanent state of mind” and move people forward on the “trail of wisdom” where their behavior can begin to change. We need but use our imagination as we encounter and experience a place as a means of appropriating portions of the earth as abundant, shared possessions rather than the literal appropriations which inevitably lead to abuse, waste, and scarcity (pp. 143-144). “Whether [a place] is lived in memory or experienced on the spot,” writes Basso, “the strength of its impact is commensurate with the richness of its contents, with the range and diversity of symbolic associations that swim within its reach and move it on its course” (p. 145).

At the time that humans became interested in the Bristlecone Pines through the discovery of their great age in the early 1950’s, our relationship with them reflected the severe disconnection and pathology from which we approach the non-human world where we alternately anthropomorphize objects of great mystery to the point of deification while at the same time acting with complete disregard for their intrinsic value. Prior to any awareness of their unique longevity, they were considered useless and lived high enough above the normal activities of every-day human events to avoid any but the most minor influences from people. The survival strategy with which the Bristlecone secures its endurance speaks volumes about the proper relationship an organism should have to its supporting environment and stands in stark contrast to what they have historically been witness to around human ventures. A primary component of the Bristlecone Pine’s success is centered on the way in which each individual tree creates a homeostatic conjunction with its surrounding environment. A gradual dieback of bark and xylem (water conducting tissue) will occur throughout the life of the tree such that the amount of living tissue the crown must support with nutrients balances the effects of damage suffered by environmental factors and the availability of resources. Even if a tree loses all of its living tissue, it may remain standing for many thousands of years afterwards due to the dry climate which prevents rotting and the durability of its highly resinous wood. It is this state of perseverance through sacrifice that most distinguishes the Bristlecone Pine and offers to their fellow human inhabitants a signification of our potential return path to wholeness with and within nature.

During the first session of the 69th Congress in 1926, two bills came before the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation epitomizing the attitudes that would form the future of the Western states. Congress created the United States Reclamation Service in 1902 to open more western land to settlement and irrigation. These “Bills to provide for the protection and development of the lower Colorado River Basin” along with a slough of other bills have established substantial jurisdiction over water appropriation rights for the federal government, while at the same time affirming and reinforcing the individual states rights to full control over their water resources. Representative Carl Hayden from Arizona characterized the position of the Western states where the greatest impact would be felt. In addressing his fellow congressmen, Hayden reiterated the code of the West in relation to water rights:

“I doubt very much whether Representatives in Congress from the arid West, where the doctrine of riparian rights does not and has never prevailed, will be in any hurry to accept the theory of this bill that Congress can make appropriations of water; that Congress, without the consent of the State, can take water for beneficial use for power or irrigation or other purposes. Jurisdiction over appropriations of waters of streams is one of the highest attributes of sovereignty in the States of the arid region. Water to them means life. Their entire future is bound up in its conservation and beneficial use.” (Hearings on H.R. 6251 and H.R. 9826, Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, 1926)

Rather than riparian principals based on the notion of sharing and conserving community water resources which were not attached to property rights, the West developed a “cowboy economic” doctrine of prior appropriation that allows great freedom surrounding the exploitation of natural resources for the benefit of a few and at the expense of one region over another and one group of people over another (Shiva, 2002, pp. 21-23). All that is required is adequate capital to appropriate water by force or to buy out the rights of local owners sufficiently to control the majority of a resource. What has been created from this doctrine is an environment of competition and individual gain as opposed to one of cooperation and sustainability. Cohen (1998) writes that the modern human history of the West is not only one of appropriation of resources, but also one of extraction. “People have been taking materials and abstractions out of the [region] for more than a century.” Even the lands where the pines reside are managed as if they are an archive of kept core sample records to be retrieved or that the land itself contains value that has been lost in other places through the continuous processes of extraction and appropriation (p. 11).

Down slope in the direction of the setting sun, the Bristlecone Pines have seen first hand the direct impact of social policy and politics based on a value system of profit and greed. The Owens Valley at the base of the White Mountains and Sierra Nevada was not long ago home to a large and thriving riparian ecology. Before 1900, the Owens River ran through the valley, starting at the southern tip of the Long Valley Caldera, gathering water from multiple streams that drained the eastern Sierra snow pack, and flowing into Owens Lake. In the early 1900’s however, a bourgeoning and parched population was emerging in the Los Angeles Basin 200 miles to the south. Largely through subterfuge on the part of greedy Los Angeles officials, who through the guise of private enterprise and with the complicity of federal government officials from the U.S. Reclamation Service, enabled the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to complete the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913 which diverted water from the Owens River. Through these massive surface water diversions by the LADWP, dropping water levels in Owens Lake exposed toxic sediments in the lake bed and by 1924, Owens Lake and much of the Owens River were dry. The lake bed itself became the single largest source of particulate matter air pollution in the United States and the thriving riparian wildlife, farming, and ranching base which inhabited the region all but disappeared. As throughout the entire Western United States, arid shrubs are replacing grasslands in the Owen Valley through ecological succession due to these extreme interventions and the mismanagement of lands which accompany the greedy processes of extraction and appropriation. By the 1930s, Los Angeles owned approximately 95 percent of all farm and ranch land in the Owens Valley and continued its push ever northward in search of more and more distant water sources to slate its insatiable thirst and fuel unbridled growth. The history of human and ecological violence that these activities continue to leave in their wake is a constant reminder of how the privatization of water rights with both corporate and governmental agency control, erode the rights of the regional people who are dependent upon a resource and lead eventually to an abolishment of collective ownership and benefit (Shiva, 2002, p. 20). The shift to bureaucratic control from distant agencies or commercial, corporate interests’ disincentives democratic social principals and ecological conservation (p. 30). This is exacerbated by State control over water resources when the State colludes with private enterprise to undermine local community interests. The concept of commons, or shared resources, works to include both the human and the non-human as a factor in the organization of society and its resources. As local commons are lost, regional self-sufficiency and vernacular culture come to an end (Snyder, 1990, p. 38-39).

From the perspective of our Bristlecone neighbors, the recent developments witnessed below them in the Owens Valley must seem bewildering. To one who lives and thrives on so little, for whom adversity is a constant companion, the ferocity with which we humans posses our surroundings, alter them to our will, and leave not but waste and destruction in our wake for only the most advantageous and parasitic species to homestead is the antithesis to a proper existence. In that each of us who are seated at the table will eventually and inevitably be a part of the meal (Snyder, 1990, p. 20), connecting with the “spirit of the place” (p.41) might allow us to take wisdom from what is taught by plants, animals, the weather, and even the destruction of a place. Even if we are physically born to a place, we often still do not live there intellectually, imaginatively, or morally (p.43). Perhaps, as Snyder says, our primary purpose may simply be to entertain the rest of nature (p.190) through our seemingly incomprehensible acts. Surely, nature must think we humans will eventually gain sufficient wisdom through our struggles with such divisive and far reaching issues. We must re-learn those things that we have somehow forgotten and hopefully we will, through their re-claiming, put ourselves back into harmony and wholeness with our natural surroundings.

From its high and constant roost upon the White Mountain Range, Methuselah continues watch into its sixth millennium. On days with little or no wind, the silence is so profound that one can hear the flutter of bird wings from high above the ground. Among a grove of ancients, we begin to sense the unity of existence if one can settle sufficiently into the stillness. It is in our nature to think in terms of opposites and dualities where we yoke and distinguish things by pairs. A person might choose a particular tree like Methuselah to speak for all such trees and contrast them to human endeavors because they seem to embody images that express deep human desires that are opposite, dissimilar, contrary, or inverse to what we experience on a daily basis; but, in the end, “it is still a tree, anchored to the ground” (Cohen, 1998, p. 182). Meanwhile, down range and toward the rising of sun, the human race takes its next step toward extinction.

In the early 1800’s, Spanish traders en route to Los Angeles traveled across the vast deserts of the Southwest along the well established Spanish Trail. In seeking a shorter route through which the Spaniards at the time referred to as “jornada de muerte,” the journey of death, a young scout stumbled into a yet unexplored area to the north and became the first person of European ancestry to look upon a grass covered valley—later named Las Vegas, “The Meadows,” for its abundant wild grasses. A plentiful water supply made this area an oasis upon the long trek and the new route shortened the overall journey by several days. The city of Las Vegas became established when 110 acres of land was auctioned off on May 15, 1905. For the last 17 years, Southern Nevada and Las Vegas Metropolitan area in particular has been the fastest growing region in the United States. The population of Las Vegas itself has approximately doubled in population each decade since the 1980’s and the current decade is no exception. Clark County in the very southern tip of the state, where Las Vegas resides, accounts for 1.6 million of the entire state of Nevada’s 2.3 million residents.

Not only is Las Vegas the fastest growing major city in the United States, it is also the driest. As a result of this unprecedented growth, the region is very much straining against the water limits that it can pump from nearby Lake Mead reservoir and other restricted sources. Lake Mead is the largest man-made reservoir in the world forming behind the great Hoover Dam whose precious water resource is shared by seven dry Colorado River states and Mexico. The lake’s water line has persistently receded throughout the recent past and currently rests more than 80 feet below what officials refer to as a “normal” level. More than 85% of the Las Vegas area water needs are drawn against the 300,000 acre-feet of water it is entitled to from Lake Mead. An acre-foot of water will supply an average size family for approximately one year. The remainder of the cities water needs come from underground wells throughout the Clark County whose water tables are slowly, but surely declining.

In addition, Nevada as a whole finds itself beset by a drought that has endured the last 4 years and will likely worsen if past cycles remain consistent. The Sierra Nevada snow pack which supplies much of the run off for ground water in the region is at it’s lowest levels in two decades and continues to not only decline due to climate changes from global warming, but also suffers from ever increasing rates of evaporation from temperature increases which foil the larger amounts of the snow-melt from ever reaching local waterways.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), which was formed as a public/private “cooperative” agency in 1991 to address Southern Nevada’s water issues on a regional basis, asserts that there is enough water “out there” to let the population of the Las Vegas area nearly double—to more than 3 million—in the next decade. To achieve this seemingly arrogant and illdestined feat, the SNWA has become the largest land owner in neighboring Lincoln County to the north where it plans to fully exercise its appropriation rights by drilling wells and building a $1-billion pipeline to further tap rivers and groundwater from neighboring rural counties. Far to the northern half of Nevada, the developments in Las Vegas and the increasing influence of the SNWA within the state has led the three major water districts in the greater Reno-Sparks area to form the Northern Nevada Water Authority in response to the south’s encroachment northward. It takes little imagination to visualize the parallels between Southern Nevada’s current trajectory with its neighbors to the north and that which led the mighty Owens Valley to the north of Las Angeles on the path to becoming an alkaline dust bowl. Just as in California where the U.S. Department of Reclamation coluded with state engineers and local water authority officials to conduct the largest resource theft in modern history, so to will Las Vegas live up to its Titanic reputation by instituting an almost 700% increase in its available water resources at the expense of rural farmers who will likely let their fields lay fallow in favor of taking what Las Vegas abundantly offers in exchange—money.

Moving northward from Lincoln County, the SNWA has already begun discussions with local officials to acquire the majority of water rights for White Pine County. In his book Nevada: True Tales from the Neon Wilderness, Jim Sloan tells a well known story from the Snake Range region in White Pine County of a park ranger and science researcher who in 1964, “for the cause of science,” cut down and killed the world’s oldest living thing—a Bristlecone Pine (nicknamed Prometheus by previous researchers working the area) that had lived on the tree line of Wheeler Peak for more than 5,000 years. It is telling of our human nature that our process of discovery is also one of destruction to the mysterious Other we seek to understand. Just as we might extract gold from mountains or appropriate water from rivers so do we draw knowledge like sap from the ancient Bristlecone Pines of the Great Basin as food for our desire and curiosity. “Other beings,” writes Snyder (1990), “do not mind being killed and eaten as food, but they expect us to say please, and thank you, and they hate to see themselves wasted. Wastefulness and carelessness,” he continues, “are caused by stinginess of spirit, an ungracious unwillingness to complete the gift-exchange transaction (p.22-23). Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us close to the actually existing world and its wholeness” (p. 25).

When we speak of trees, place, and nature, we reveal ourselves through traces of our own history in the language we use, the way knowledge becomes human, and the way in which revelations gained through contact with the wild alter our perceptions of the world (Cohen, 1998, p.181). Speaking of the Bristlecone Pines in the Great Basin as if they were receptacles for all our hopes of wisdom and a return to unity with nature, Jim Sloan writes:

“They had a haunting allure, a wizened character that gave great meaning to each twist of its trunk, and each scar in its bark. They had survived droughts and mudslides and terrifying winters….They bent with the wind, flourished in the warmth of an early spring, yet knew the waste of impetuosity. They’d learned to relish the Earth’s meager offerings. (Sloan, 1993 In Cohen, 1998, p. 198)

Basso (1996) describes the ethnographic process as moving from moments of “anxious puzzlement” derived from our raw experience of place to subsequent ones of “cautious insight” as we begin to digest meanings (p. 110). In the same way that the property of water in our interanimate encounters is literally a key life-sustaining element to both tree and human, so does the metaphor of water carry with it a sense of the wisdom of our place together whether it be in the form of water in the river, blood in the vein, sap in the living tree, or resin in deadwood. They are all linked together in an endless cycle of renewal just as our history cycles in interlaced narratives of meaning told in both language and ringed wood.

References
Archibold, R. & Johnson, K. (2007, April 4). No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action. Tuscaloosa News. Retrieved April 7, 2007, from http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/ZNYT02/704040370/1015/
Basso, K. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Cohen, M. (1998). A garden of Bristlecones: tales of change in the Great Basin. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
Fritts, H. (1998). Tales trees tell: Story 1: the wisdom of the ancients. Tucson: DendroPower Press. Retrieved April 7, 2007, from http://tree.ltrr.arizona.edu/~hal/tancient.pdf
Miller, L. (2005). Ancient Bristlecone Pines. Retrieved April 7, 2007, from http://sonic.net/bristlecone/
Ritter, K. (2004, March 7). LasVegas thirsts for more water. Associated Press. Retrieved April 7, 2007, from http://www.mindfully.org/Water/2004/Las-Vegas-Thirst7mar04.htm
Shiva, V. (2002). Water wars: privatization, pollution, and profit. Cambridge: South End Press.
Snyder, G. (1990). The practice of the wild. San Francisco: Shoemaker & Hoard.