🌱 Welcome to the Jungle: You Are a Redwood Burl
March Madness, Day 1
(Welcome to Day 1 of our March Madness series, with love from Genevieve & Ali & the Ally Show)
One of my favorite things about living in California is the easy access to redwood trees (Sequoia Sempervirens).
Redwood trees are famous and beloved for many reasons. We love that most mature trees are over 1000 years old, for example, and we love that their roots connect them to each other underground.
But my personal favorite thing about them is that redwoods have burls:
So what the heck’s a redwood burl? Just what are those bumpy things all over this tree?
A burl is basically a concentrated lump of life force. It’s made of something called “unsprouted bud tissue,” which you can visualize as many many tiny tiny redwood seeds crunched together in a ball.
Some burls grow on the trunk of a redwood, as shown here ⬆️, and some grow down around the roots. Burls on the trunk often form in response to an injury to the tree - they slowly grow right over the damaged area, preventing the injury from hurting the rest of the tree, like the world’s biggest and most interesting Band-Aid. This is one of the reasons that redwoods can bounce back after a forest fire.
And if the tree falls down or dies, new trees can grow from the burls. These are genetically identical to the parent tree - yes, these trees are clones, as if redwood burls weren’t cool enough already. This image looks AI-generated but I’m pretty sure it’s real. Even if it’s not real, I can testify that I have seen things like this with my own eyes:
Kk so why am I talking about redwood burls today, on the first day of March, the first day of March Madness, the first day of Ramadan, when it feels like the first day of spring?
Redwood burls are resilience crunched into a ball. If something happens to the original tree, burls let that tree live on in a different form.
My supposition for today is that you are a redwood burl, and indeed a redwood tree with access to an unlimited number of burls, with unlimited powers of regeneration.
Yep, even if you have been burned by a forest fire or have been knocked right off your feet and even if you feel more or less completely dead, you have everything you need to grow that new tree.
The Latin name for the coast redwood tree is Sequoia sempervirens. Sempervirens literally means “always alive.” That’s you, no matter how dead or defeated or diminished you may feel inside.
As usual, there’s a Hamilton quote for the occasion:
[I’m] Hercules Mulligan
I need no introduction
When you knock me down I get the f*ck back up again
Hercules Mulligan - he be growing those new trees all over the place, and winning wars to boot.
Also as usual, there’s a Goethe quote for the occasion too. Actually Goethe’s authorship of this line has been pretty thoroughly debunked but I just love saying the name “Goethe” so I’m attributing this to him today anyway:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!
Yeah I’m personally not seeing Goethe using that exclamation mark either, but it’s the first day of March Madness so I! am! totally! going! to! keep! it! in!
Alright, and so your tiny little homework assignment for today is this:
Sit or stand still and quiet somewhere safe.
Close your eyes and tune in to the quiet space inside you.
Visualize a beautiful redwood tree that is over 1000 years old and absolutely crawling with burls - the more burls the better. If you have never seen a redwood tree you can visualize the first tree shown in this post ⬆️.
Allow your mind to become more quiet. It doesn’t have to be completely silent, just let it focus on the image of the tree rather than all the other little annoying things it wants you to think about and all the other little tasks you gotta do today. Keep coming back to that beautiful tree and all its rich resilient burls.
Ask yourself, “What do I dream I can do?”
Sit or stand quietly and see if any dreams come to you. Give it a nice long time.
If no ideas come to you, NO SWEAT. This is about inviting ideas in, there is no pressure for them to come to you. When you get bored, you can stop.
If yes, grab a piece of paper and a writing utensil and just write it down. A couple of words or phrases to remind you later is plenty. If you have more than one idea, write them all down - timebox three minutes.
You’re done! You can go about your day.
Alright, my friends, so that’s my ask for today.
I’m not even going to make you start the project today. (Although if you feel the mojo to start something today, and especially if that mojo has been elusive, I wildly encourage you to do so, even if you just take the simplest teeny-tiny baby step.)
Today it’s enough to just meditate on the idea of the redwood burl and see if there is any teeny-tiny baby sprout that wants to start growing.
Tomorrow I will ask you to consider starting something. We’ll sit down with friend of the pod Alex Witkowski and ask him about the inspiration behind his brand-new-for-2025 music & community newsletter, Spin This. He’ll be one of our resilience role models this month.
Preview fun teaser for tomorrow:
Q from Genevieve. Why did you decide to start Spin This, and why right now?
A from Alex. I feel a bit of urgency in what’s happening around music. I recently started reading Liz Pelly’s book Mood Machine about Spotify. And I worry that things become bad much more quickly than they improve. So I felt like I couldn’t really wait on this, and I really wanted to find my people (other music lovers!) quickly.
So, today we dream, and tomorrow we start.
Tomorrow we feel that bit of urgency.
Tomorrow we take one itty-bitty tiny-teeny forward step.
And don’t go it alone,
Genevieve
Burls! 🤩