"Wise Trees" collects photographs of impressive and historic trees from across the globe.
Excerpt:
The culmination of two years of traveling, Diane Cook and Len Jenshel’s photography book “Wise Trees” offers an arboreal tour of the world where background scenery becomes the centerpiece. When documenting historic and landmark trees across five continents, the photographers sought out “inspirational trees — ones that had witnessed history, survived calamities, or were the focus of spiritual veneration” and found over 60 examples from around the globe.
The origins of other hallowed trees — all visually arresting — are murkier. California’s Hallelujah Junction, on a flat stretch of U.S. Highway 395, would be unremarkable save for the shoe tree, named for the dozens of old shoes — many scrawled with wishes — dangling from its branches, like sneakers hanging from a telephone wire. “This is the American version of a wishing tree,” the photographers write.
Not every example in “Wise Trees” is so joyous. The photographers are careful to include trees with dark histories, like a killing tree in Cambodia and a hanging tree in Texas, and those that serve as reminders of solemn events, like the survivor trees of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These trees are wise not because they fulfill hopes, but because they have born witness.
In Santa María del Tule, Mexico, the 137.8-foot circumference of El Árbol del Tule’s trunk grows in the town center and is old enough to have witnessed the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Depicted in “Wise Trees” ringed with schoolchildren to convey a sense of scale, its story embodies a slice of Oaxacan history. To the indigenous Zapotec people, the tree symbolizes life; thought to have been planted more than a thousand years ago, it defiantly towers over a nearby Roman Catholic church built by the Spanish in the 18th century.
The shoe tree in Hallelujah Junction, Calif. (Diane Cook and Len Jenshel)
El Árbol del Tule in Oaxaca, Mexico. (Diane Cook and Len Jenshel)
