Wisdom of Ancient Western Junipers

“What would the Juniper hairstreak butterfly do without the tree that bears its name? How about the ferruginous hawk, other raptors and even golden eagles who build nests in the very top in which they raise their young, and the mule deer who use it as a thermal shelter in winter?” – Jim Anderson, naturalist and “champion of the natural world” (1928-2022)

To live and grow in the high desert of Central Oregon for a thousand years and longer, focus on one living root to quench your thirst. Many of your great twisted limbs may die and break, yet all you need is a single snaking line of sustenance to the one branch.

Even your way of leafing is held tight to the twig, like the fine scales of sagebrush lizards also savvy in the art of dry living. You do not take too much. You think in the way of indigenous peoples –seven generations down the line, not all now, not all at once.

In the harsh times of winter, you offer powdery blue berries and cones to the beaks of American Robins, Townsend’s Solitaires, Western Bluebirds, Cedar Waxwings, Steller’s Jays, and Scrub Jays. Spread your umbrella limbs wide to shelter and shade elk and deer. Welcome packrat nests in your hollows and clefts of lower branches. Know the language of raven, coyote, and cottontail. Be witness to predator and prey and cycle upon cycle of seasons.

*Townsend’s Solitaire perches on a barbed wire fence (next to our car at the trailhead parking lot). Berry seeker. Single note caller from the tops of juniper. Winter sweet singer.*

We humans who walk on the horizontal plane can only imagine your great taproots sensing water in the aquifer perhaps 25 feet below and the strong crisscrossing lateral roots in constant communion through the mycelial network. So many generations of bunchgrasses, wildflowers, ants, beetles, lizards, and all we overlook are interwoven with the sandy ashy soils and your roots–roots that store tons of carbon, roots that split rock, and roots that hold you up when you begin to topple.

*Half-uprooted juniper thrives on the lean. Notice the moss and lichens.*

On this day as our small group wandered and wondered about the patterns of green moss in the desert, of wildly differing lichens ornamenting trees and stones, we also tried to step with care. We touched the trees with gentle hands.

Some of the 1000-year-old+ denizens bear the old marks of chainsaws cutting off limbs. We reveled in their protection now within this Badlands Wilderness –thanks to the efforts of the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA), more than 3000 people writing letters, and President Obama signing the bill into law in 2009.

*Wolf lichen on moss beneath branches of an old juniper.*

As the cloudy afternoon misted rain and feathery mosses sipped droplets, our group of five departed with reverence for the old ones.

I’m left with the image of one juniper with a single living branch coiled into a circle–reminding me there are no beginnings and endings, no hierarchies, and no linear paths. There’s comfort in the curvature of great trees, the coming of the full moon tonight, and the circling of a lone raven overhead.