When Mortal Trees Become Immortal Symbols
On the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the story of one pear tree’s miraculous recovery continues to captivate human imaginations. People relate to trees as living symbols of recovery after tremendous adversity. Mortal trees become immortal when they provide us with powerful metaphors.
Last weekend, I heard about the “9/11 Survivor Tree” that grew outside the World Trade Center. The Callery pear tree survived being buried in the rubble of the collapsed skyscrapers. In November 2001, it was moved to a nursery and nursed back to health. Its journey was not uneventful.
Callery pears are tough ornamentals suitable for life as urban, street trees. The Survivor Tree was particularly so. It was one of seven skeletal trees uncovered from the rubble in the plaza of the World Trade Center after September 11. It was deemed to be the tree in the worst condition; a survivor facing long odds.
The tree was eight feet tall when it first arrived at the Arthur Ross Nursery at Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. According to the New York Daily News, burning debris from the falling skyscrapers reduced it to a “limbless, charred trunk, coated in ash.” New York City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe was quoted saying the tree first looked as if it had been “soldered, twisted and gnarled and blackened.”
Since then, the Survivor Tree has grown thirty feet tall. The stubs of its lowest limbs still bear visible scars of the traumatic blast and subsequent collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. Eight ensuing years of healing and growth have yielded new growth with white blossoms in spring. This past March, a freak weekend windstorm uprooted and toppled the Survivor Tree. The resilient pear was set upright and it pulled through once again. It’s become an inspiring symbol of survival against all odds.
After twice overcoming adversity, the pear tree is slated to be transplanted to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the former site World Trade Center. According to Joseph C. Daniels, President and CEO of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, the Survivor Tree is “a symbol of resilience.”
There is a different living memorial in a park near City Hall on the Brooklyn Bridge side of Manhattan that is home to another “survivor tree.” A second generation “Oklahoma City Survivor Tree” was presented to the Mayor of New York by the Mayor of Oklahoma City shortly after the September 11 attacks. Human survivors of the two terrorism attacks have traded seeds from the Oklahoma City survivor tree and propagated what the sister of a fallen New York City firefighter killed on 9/11 termed a “grand-baby” survivor tree: a third generation offspring from the Oklahoma survivor tree. People may view these cherished symbolic trees as family and become no-less emotionally attached.
Renowned naturalist John Hay wrote: “It is an unfortunate man or woman who has never loved a tree.” We easily relate to trees we’ve known since childhood. Trees are alive and exhibit scars of their life events. We share time and space, mark the seasons and develop a kinship. Unlike our pets, community trees generally outlive us.
We view memorial trees as imperishable living monuments during our lifetimes. While historic trees often outlive people and events with which they are linked, all trees eventually die. However symbolic, they’re no less mortal than we are.
Perhaps it’s better to love tree-symbolism than individual trees. The metaphor lives on just as our memories of loved ones who have died live on. And just as tender spring flowers yield to green summer leaves and eventually autumn foliage, fallen seeds and bare winter limbs, their example recapitulates the cycle to which all life conforms. Best of all – their example provides us with the faith to plant new seeds, to grow the next generation of trees.