#wise trees

Excerpt:

The culmination of two years of traveling, Diane Cook and Len Jenshel’s photography book “Wise Trees” offers an arboreal tour of the world where background scenery becomes the centerpiece. When documenting historic and landmark trees across five continents, the photographers sought out “inspirational trees — ones that had witnessed history, survived calamities, or were the focus of spiritual veneration” and found over 60 examples from around the globe.

The origins of other hallowed trees — all visually arresting — are murkier. California’s Hallelujah Junction, on a flat stretch of U.S. Highway 395, would be unremarkable save for the shoe tree, named for the dozens of old shoes — many scrawled with wishes — dangling from its branches, like sneakers hanging from a telephone wire. “This is the American version of a wishing tree,” the photographers write.

Not every example in “Wise Trees” is so joyous. The photographers are careful to include trees with dark histories, like a killing tree in Cambodia and a hanging tree in Texas, and those that serve as reminders of solemn events, like the survivor trees of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These trees are wise not because they fulfill hopes, but because they have born witness.

In Santa María del Tule, Mexico, the 137.8-foot circumference of El Árbol del Tule’s trunk grows in the town center and is old enough to have witnessed the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Depicted in “Wise Trees” ringed with schoolchildren to convey a sense of scale, its story embodies a slice of Oaxacan history. To the indigenous Zapotec people, the tree symbolizes life; thought to have been planted more than a thousand years ago, it defiantly towers over a nearby Roman Catholic church built by the Spanish in the 18th century.

The shoe tree in Hallelujah Junction, Calif. (Diane Cook and Len Jenshel)

The Shoe Tree (An excerpt from Wise Trees by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel)

UTAH JUNIPER (Juniperus osteosperma) US Highway 395, Hallelujah Junction, California

There is not much evidence of human life along the desolate stretch of road just north of where US Highway 395 meets State Route 70 at a place called Hallelujah Junction, California—except for the many shoes hanging from this Utah juniper tree. Those who feel compelled to toss their footwear onto the branches of this juniper often inscribe their wishes on the soon-to-be dangling shoes. This is an American variation of a wishing tree—quite different in style from those in other parts of the world.

No one can say when this ritual began near Hallelujah Junction, which sits about thirty miles northwest of Reno, Nevada, only that it has been going on for decades. Junipers rarely grow more than thirty feet high, so it does not require a long toss to make a wish. And although the wood is quite durable—thankfully, for this specimen—every so often the California Department of Transportation comes along to remove the shoes. The combined weight of ice or snow and dangling shoes, compounded by fierce winds, has caused limbs to snap off in the winter, which explains the Shoe Tree’s oddly shaped crown.

Leading landscape photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel present Wise Trees—a stunning photography book containing more than 50 historical trees with remarkable stories from around the world.

Supported by grants from the Expedition Council of the National Geographic Society, Cook and Jenshel spent two years traveling to fifty-nine sites across five continents to photograph some of the world’s most historic and inspirational trees. Trees, they tell us, can live without us, but we cannot live without them. Not only do trees provide us with the oxygen we breathe, food gathered from their branches, and wood for both fuel and shelter, but they have been essential to the spiritual and cultural life of civilizations around the world.

From Luna, the Coastal Redwood in California that became an international symbol when activist Julia Butterfly Hill sat for 738 days on a platform nestled in its branches to save it from logging, to the Bodhi Tree, the sacred fig in India that is a direct descendent of the tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment, Cook and Jenshel reveal trees that have impacted and shaped our lives, our traditions, and our feelings about nature. There are also survivor trees, including a camphor tree in Nagasaki that endured the atomic bomb, an American elm in Oklahoma City, and the 9/11 Survivor Tree, a Callery pear at the 9/11 Memorial. All of the trees were carefully selected for their role in human dramas.

This project both reflects and inspires awareness of the enduring role of trees in nurturing and sheltering humanity. Photographers, environmentalists, history buffs, and nature-lovers alike will appreciate the extraordinary stories found within the pages of Wise Trees!