The Pines are whispering, can you hear them?

January 2011

All of my life I have been around pines. They are the most familiar tree I know. I recall that any time I was in the woods with my daddy he would grab a pine needle and suck on it as we walked along. He was getting his vitamins A and C dose whether he thought of it like that or not.

The pines are in every country that I’ve ever been. Everywhere. In these southern Appalachians it's white pines, shortleaf, pitch, Virginia, Table Mountain. Pines are the tree that have always befriended me with familiarity and abundance. They are also the trees that suffer the most from big storms, having such soft wood from their rapid trunk growth. The brown mat of fallen needles under the white pines is like an enormous blanket to lie upon and daydream. Sometimes I pick off the sap of a pine and chew it like gum. It is astringent but has a pleasing taste and if there is any mucous in my lungs, well, that draws it out pretty quickly. In Utah, I put the pinion pine tree cones in the campfire, wrapped in foil, and pulled out those delicious pine nuts for eating that otherwise cost a fortune in the grocery store.

I love drinking pine tea for colds, sore throat and to just feel rejuvenated. It is free and easy to harvest the needles. Now that is the kind of healthcare we can embrace.  This time of year, their greenery gives us hope for the new growth that comes in spring. I stop at small pines along my daily walks and bite off some needles, or let the rain or snow clinging to them dissolve on my tongue and I feel the essence of endurance. This green never stops.

The pines, in the Pinaceae family, have about 100 species to its one genus, Pinus. They are old, for 100 million years or more this family has been around. Grasses did not even come into existence until somewhere around 50 million years ago to put it into perspective. Amber comes from the fossilized pitch of the Pine tree. The oldest known tree in the world is a pine, the Bristlecone , around 4,700 years old, in the White Mountains of California.

When the wind is blowing, can you hear the pines whispering? It is a whispy, gentle, steady sound I hear. What are they saying to one another? To us? Maybe they are talking about the owl that slept in their branches that day, or the aromatic sap that is running up their trunk, or the pollen that just fertilized an exposed seed on one of its pinecone scales. Listen. Listen to the pines whispering their story to you and pass it on.

Return to Archives