Communing with the ancients - bristlecone pines - Brief Article

On the highest slopes of the most inhospitable mountains in the remotest West: Bristlecones reveal the secret of longevity

We are above 10,000 feet in the White Mountains of eastern California. There is no one around, but somehow we hardly feel alone.

It is a strange sensation, especially in this barren landscape of tan hills covered by broken rock and scattered bristlecone pines, the world's oldest living trees. Theirs is a haunting presence, ancient survivors that let us glimpse a very distant past.

"Living ruins" is how Dr. Edmund Schulman described bristlecones, which grow where few other trees can survive, at elevations up to 11,500 feet, in the windswept arid high country of the American West. Schulman conducted the pioneering studies of the White Mountain bristlecone population in 1953. He discovered that, amazingly, the oldest trees are the ones that grow under the harshest conditions. The trees that surround us here in the Patriarch Grove have been here 4,000 years. Ironically bristlecones that grow in gentler set tings may live only 300 to 400 years Ease does not equal longevity.

This may not be Mt. Everest but there is still a feeling of being at the top of the world. The day couldn't be more beautiful: bright summer sun, a gentle breeze.

The bristlecones' tortured shapes, especially when contrasted with the almost Christmas tree-like symmetry of the grove's young trees, suggest that most days are nothing like this. Instead, they hint at the kind of climatic assault that the trees must endure for millennia.

Branches and trunks twist and bend as they grow, creeping horizontally along the ground as well as reaching toward the sky. The wood is grooved and contoured, further exaggerating an appearance of suspended motion; older bristlecones look as if they are bending under the force of a relentless gale.

Some trees have only a few branches that still bear needles. They appear dead, like driftwood tossed upon a beach after a storm.

On many of the bristlecones, only thin strips of living bark survive on otherwise bare trunks. In a sense, the trees live only enough to stay alive, not unlike a hibernating animal. The trees' needles can live for as long as 40 years.

Even after death, the trees continue to defy time. Evolved to withstand the elements, a dead bristlecone's wood can linger for thousands of years, slowly eroding like stone rather than rotting. Within the grove we find an assortment of standing snags, some reduced to narrow splintered panels reminiscent of abstract sculpture.

Strong is the tendency to try to place the bristlecone into a human context: We date them by saying that some of the ancient trees are older than the pyramids. We give them titles like the Patriarch or Methuselah and read into their weather-beaten textures the kind of character that we associate with the lines and wrinkles on the faces of our own elders.

And like our elders, bristlecones have much to teach. Core samples from the trees have provided us with a climatic record dating back thousands of years, allowing scientists to more accurately calibrate carbon-dating methods, forcing reassessments of long-accepted chronologies of human civilization.

In the name of science, there have also been abuses. In 1964 at Wheeler Peak, now in Great Basin National Park, the 5,000-year-old Prometheus tree, perhaps the oldest living organism on earth at the time, was cut down for examination of its core and rings. Like a holy relic, a portion of it is on display at the park's visitor center.

Of course we must go out among the trees to ponder the forces they have withstood. Unlike redwoods and sequoias, theirs is more a figurative grandeur, their beauty and character the product of some unconscious determination to hold on, to always hold on.

Bristlecone country travel planner

There are two species of these trees, the Great Basin bristlecone (Pinus longaeva) and the Rocky Mountain bristlecone (P. aristata), plus a closely related foxtail pine located in the northern and southern Sierra. The Great Basin trees tend to be the most dramatic of the species because of their more extreme growing conditions; they are found at the sites we describe here.

Though bristlecones grow in remote locations, these groves are accessible during summer. Be sure, however, to check on weather conditions before heading out.

A great background resource is A Garden of Bristlecones: Tales of Change in the Great Basin by Michael P Cohen (University of Nevada Press, Reno, 1998; $34 95 877/682-6657). The book explores the natural history of the trees and their symbolic significance.

California

Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest.

Considered the classic bristlecone destination, the White Mountains site in Inyo National Forest has a small visitor center and several hiking routes. If you're looking for a more secluded spot after visiting the Schulman Grove, continue on the improved dirt road for 12 miles to Patriarch Grove. About 23 miles from U.S. 395 at Big Pine via State 168 and White Mountain Rd.; (760) 873-2500.