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At Least There Are Trees

2025-07-22 · letter vlog · John · 5:17 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature (also: Books & writing) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion, fundraising ask, on location

Walking in a 12,000-year-old forest, John says trees console him: plants make up most of Earth's biomass, early trees once caused a mass extinction, and ginkgos predate us by ages, yet trees remind him that humans, the only species to name the ginkgo, are participants in life on Earth, not observers. A P.S. plugs a DFTBA shirt whose proceeds go to the Nature Conservancy.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — At least there are trees: the 12,000-year-old forest, its trees, and John's dad called a tree hugger

  • ★★★ John says that when younger he thought trees a big waste of space apart from providing oxygen, but now, when he is sad and on the edge of something worse than sad, he thinks: at least there are trees. — 00:00:00

    “well, at least there are trees”

  • ★★ John says this forest has stood about 12,000 years, since a glacier receded at the end of the last ice age: older than writing or the wheel, about as old as agriculture. — 00:00:13

  • ★★ John says his dad was the state director of the Nature Conservancy when they were kids, and critics derided him as a tree hugger, as if he thought trees mattered more than people. — 00:00:28 · Mike Green

00:00:52 — A plant planet; aliens and forests; John as a tree nerd; not knowing what it is like to be a tree

  • ★★★ John says plants make up 82 percent of Earth's biomass, so even after the deforestation of North America and elsewhere this is still a plant planet, with humans a rounding error. — 00:00:52 · Earth
  • ★★ John wonders what visiting aliens would think of trees and how forests grow through cooperation and competition, making space in the canopy for light to reach the floor. — 00:01:21
  • ★★ John says he has become a tree nerd in middle age: apps identify trees for him, and he notes in his gratitude journal seeing a northern red oak or a sugar maple. — 00:01:39
  • ★ John says this winter his neighbor tapped sugar maples in the forest and made delicious maple syrup, and the trees didn't seem to mind. — 00:01:47
  • ★★ John says he doesn't know what it is like to be a tree and can't really imagine it; trying does trees a disservice by anthropomorphizing them, so he must let them be. — 00:01:54
  • ★★★ John calls a sentence from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek one of his all-time favourites, admiring the necessary 'really', the word 'intricate' and the comma placement. — 00:02:11

00:02:18 — Annie Dillard's sentence about being alive under trees; John's younger belief that the world was in cyberspace

  • ★★★ John says we really are alive under trees even when we cannot see one; truly under them we notice it, and their shade keeps us cool. — 00:02:30
  • ★★ John says many people, himself included, feel they live primarily online, far from trees; in his younger, more ironic years he thought trees irrelevant because the world was in bodiless cyberspace. — 00:02:50

00:03:16 — Trees caused a mass extinction; ancient ginkgos; humans as a blip but participants in life

  • ★★★ John says over 300 million years ago early trees caused one of the greatest mass extinctions: phosphorus-rich soil washed into waters, causing algae blooms that killed about 75% of marine species, including almost all coral. — 00:03:16
  • ★★ John says we see trees as gentle symbols of nature in balance, but they have caused much suffering, became too powerful for the planet's good, and still tower over us. — 00:03:43
  • ★★ John says trees much like the ginkgo date back 290 million years, about a thousand times longer than humans, and ginkgos are planted in cities because they tolerate pollution and concrete. — 00:04:00

  • ★★★ John says sitting under a ginkgo reminds him humans are a blip in the story of life, but what a blip: the only species that ever tried to name the ginkgo. — 00:04:22

    “we're a blip in the story of life. But also, what a blip.”

  • ★★★ John says we are not observers of life on Earth but participants in it, so trees remind him how astonishing they are and how astonishing we are. — 00:04:41 · Earth

    “We are not observers of life on Earth”

00:05:01 — P.S.: the Bluesky thread, the DFTBA shirt, proceeds to the Nature Conservancy

  • ★★ John says the video was inspired by a Bluesky thread, after which DFTBA made an At Least There Are Trees t-shirt, sold only for the next two weeks at DFTBA.com. — 00:05:01 · DFTBA Records
  • ★★★ John says all his proceeds from the shirt will go to the Nature Conservancy in honor of his dad. — 00:05:10 · Mike Green

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Ginkgo biloba · tree

Also: People: Annie Dillard · Mike Green

Projects: DFTBA Records

Works: At Least There Are Trees shirt · Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Organizations: The Nature Conservancy

Concepts: Acer saccharum · anthropomorphism · Biomass (ecology) · coral · deforestation · environmentalism · Extinction event · extraterrestrial life · Plant · Platanus occidentalis · Quercus rubra

Places: Earth · North America

Events: Late Devonian extinction

Only in the description or credits: Bluesky

Also centred on Ginkgo biloba: The Weirdest Living Animals - (With Dr. Lawrence Turtleman)

Also centred on tree: Nourished by Leaving · October 4, 2024 · The Molecule that Changed Everything · I Like Being Alive

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