The use of the jadachin* continued long after the Mongols ceased to be primarily shamanistic in faith. Boyle notes that in the late Yuan or Northern Yuan period, the Mongols (who were Buddhist at this time) used them against the Ming. In the Islamic world, jadachin appeared at the Battle of the Mire (1365), in which the Amir Timur (1335–1405) was defeated by the Chaghatayids of Moghulistan. Abu Sa’id, a Timurid, employed jadachin in 1451, not in battle put to produce rain in a desolate area.62 Other evidence suggests that the use of the jada stones became prevalent throughout Central Eurasia after the Mongol Empire, demonstrating once again the cross-cultural importance of the Mongol Empire. Molnar notes that while weather magic appears to be a global phenomenon, the use of weather stones as a “meteorological weapon” appears to be a particularly Inner Asian phenomenon. Furthermore, while there are no pre-thirteenth-century examples of the Mongols using weather stones, the Mongols’ use of bezoars as weather stones spread throughout the empire thereafter.

Lee, Wayne E.. Warfare and Culture in World History, Second Edition (p. 86). NYU Press. Kindle Edition.

*jadchin - a bezoar used as a "weather stone" to cause inclement weather

My sycamore tree began life in the gravel at the edge of a parking lot. If trees can feel pain, that is a painful, unlucky death. I carefully dug it up and put it in a pot I made out of a disposable cup.

Hello small one. This world may be cruel, but I will not be.

I decided to take care of it, not expecting it to survive, and when my sycamore tree unfurled one tiny leaf and then another, it chiseled a tiny foothold in my terrified brain, the kind of brain that doesn't remember a world before the atomic bomb and before 9/11.

I googled the lifespans of trees. My neurons had to stretch and expand to accommodate what I learned: My sycamore tree may live five hundred years. It's hard to think something so big. In twenty years, my baby sycamore tree will be three stories tall, and the home of many creatures. In five years, my sycamore tree will be taller than I am. In one year, it will be summer.

There's this concept called sense of foreshortened future where people who have lived through trauma can't conceptualize a future for themselves because deep down they don't expect to survive, When I look forward, all I see is fire and death, melting ice and burning sky. We were raised Evangelical. All we see is Judgment Day, except there is no heaven.

But now there is a tiny gap in the wall, a crack in the door of my cell

and on the other side, I see a tree

There is, in the future, a great old sycamore tree, full of clean winds and the stir of a thousand wings. A hundred years from now. Fifty years from now. There will be forests in that world. There will be a world.

It takes courage, but we have to imagine it.

Most tree species can live in excess of three or four hundred years. I think I'm learning something. I think there are ancient voices saying hello small one, touch the dirt and the leaves, for now you are part of something that cannot die

in 2030 I will be thirty years old and the world will not have ended and there will still be hummingbirds, and we will have photos of the stars more beautiful than we can now imagine.

I planted an Eastern Redcedar; they may live nine hundred years. There will be nine hundred years. The people in that time will remember us. Maybe we will meet the aliens (hi aliens!).

I will blow out the candles on many birthday cakes in a world where there are wolves in dark forests far from home. I am learning to imagine the future. I learned recently that elk were reintroduced to the Appalachian Mountains after over a hundred years of extirpation, and that they are expanding their range.

That tiny crack I can see through now opens a tiny bit more:

Maybe elk will pass through my hometown, maybe there will be a forest where the pasture is on the high hill that I can see from my home

say it, say it, say it: ten years, thirty years, a hundred years from now

.also, scale reference! just the wheel is 70 feet in diameter