The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(18)

“Jane, you say the resilience of nature gives you hope—why?”

Jane smiled as she looked at the large tree in front of us. Her hand was still resting on its mossy, gnarled, and ancient bark.

“I think that I can answer your question best with a story.”

I’d noticed that Jane often answered questions with stories, and I mentioned that to her.

“Yes, I’ve found that stories reach the heart better than any facts or figures. People remember the message in a well-told story even if they don’t remember all the details. Anyway, I want to answer your question with a story that began on that terrible day in 2001—9/11—and the collapse of the Twin Towers. I was in New York on that day when our world changed forever. I still can remember the disbelief, the fear, the confusion as the city went quiet save for the wailing of the sirens on the police cars and ambulances on the streets emptied of people.”


The Survivor Tree being rescued from Ground Zero, massively injured. The woman in the hardhat is Rebecca Clough, who initially realized the tree was still alive. Rebecca was the first of many dedicated people instrumental in her rescue and survival. (MICHAEL BROWNE)




As she is now, thriving at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. (9/11 MEMORIAL & MUSEUM, PHOTOGRAPH BY AMY DREHER)



My memory flashed back to that brutal day as those two pillars of our modern world came crashing down. Having grown up in New York, I felt the attacks in a deep and personal way, as everyone knew friends or family who were in the towers or nearby when the attack occurred. I thought of the enormous crater at Ground Zero, the destruction, the horror of it all.

Jane continued her story. “It was ten years after that terrible day that I was introduced to The Survivor Tree, a Callery pear tree, who had been discovered by a cleanup worker a month after the collapse of the towers, crushed between two blocks of cement. All that was left was half a trunk that had been charred black with roots that were broken; and there was only one living branch.

“She was almost sent to the dump, but the young woman who found her, Rebecca Clough, begged that the tree might be given a chance. And so she went to be cared for in a nursery in the Bronx. Bringing that seriously damaged tree back to health was not an easy task, and it was touch-and-go for a while. But eventually she made it. And once she was strong enough, she was returned to be planted in what is now the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. In the spring her branches are bright with blossoms. People know her story now. I’ve seen them looking at her and wiping away tears. She truly is a symbol of the resilience of nature—and a reminder of all that was lost on that terrible day twenty years ago.”

Jane and I stood quietly, thinking about the resilience of that tree. And then Jane began to speak.

“There’s another story about a survivor tree which is even more dramatic in a way,” Jane said. “In 1990 I visited Nagasaki, the city where the second atomic bomb was dropped at the end of World War Two. My hosts showed me photos of the absolute and horrifying devastation of the city. The fireball produced by the nuclear explosion reached temperatures equivalent to the sun—millions of degrees. It was like a lunar landscape or what I imagine Dante’s Inferno might look like. Scientists predicted that nothing would grow for decades. But, amazingly, two five-hundred-year-old camphor trees had survived. Only the lower half of their trunks remained, and from that most of the branches had been torn off. Not a single leaf remained on the mutilated trees. But they were alive.

“I was taken to see one of the survivors. It’s now a large tree but its thick trunk has cracks and fissures, and you can see it’s all black inside. But every spring that tree puts out new leaves. Many Japanese regard it as a holy monument to peace and survival; and prayers, written in tiny kanji characters on parchment, had been hung from the branches in memory of all those who died. I stood there, humbled by the devastation we humans can cause and the unbelievable resilience of nature.”

Jane’s voice was full of awe and I could tell she was far away, remembering that encounter.

I was moved by those two stories. But still I was not sure how the stories of these irrepressible trees could serve as one of Jane’s main reasons that there was hope for our world and for our planet.

“But tell me, what does the survival of those trees tell you about the resilience of nature more generally?”

“Well, I remember a really bad bush fire at Gombe that swept through the open woodlands above the forested valleys. Everything was charred and black. Yet within a couple of days after one little shower of rain, the whole area was carpeted with the palest of green as new grass pushed up through the black soil. And a little later, when the rainy season began in earnest, several trees that I had been sure were completely dead started thrusting out new leaves. A hillside resurrected from the dead. And, of course, we see this resilience all around the world. But it’s not just the flora; the fauna can regenerate, too. Think about the skinks.”


The tree that survived the atomic bomb that devastated Nagasaki in Japan. The great black wounds in her trunk show how she suffered. She is still alive and considered a sacred being by many in Japan. (MEGHAN DEUTSCHER)



“Skinks?” I asked.

“It’s a type of lizard that shakes off its tail to distract predators who pounce on the wildly wiggling tail while the skink makes a getaway. Then, right away, the skink starts growing a new tail from the bloody stump. Even the spinal cord grows back. Salamanders grow new tails in the same way, and octopuses and starfish grow new arms. The starfish can even store nutrients in a severed arm, which sustain it while it grows back a new body and mouth!”