A Walk In The Woods - An Excerpt

For all its mass, a tree is a remarkably delicate thing. All of its internal life exists within three paper-thin layers of tissue, the phloem, xylem and cambium, just beneath the bark, which together form a moist sleeve around the dead heartwood. However tall it grows, a tree is just a few pounds of living cells thinly spread between roots and leaves. These three diligent layers of cells perform all the intricate science and engineering needed to keep a tree alive, and the efficiency with which they do it is one of the wonders of life. Without noise or fuss, every tree in a forest lifts massive volumes of water - several hundred gallons in the case of a large tree on a hot day - from its roots to its leaves, where it is returned to the atmosphere. Imagine the din and commotion, the clutter of machinery, that would be needed for a fire department to raise a similar volume of water to that of a single tree. And lifting water is just one of the many jobs that the phloem, xylem and cambium perform.

It is quite a rare occasion for me to stop midway through a compelling book, but I really want to share this with you. It may just be a goofy recollection of Bill Byson's courageous attempt at walking the Appalachian Trail, but if you, like me, have read his works, I'm sure you'll appreciate how he'd always throw in nuggets of seemingly trivial knowledge which are, in fact, most humbling and thought-provoking. I would even go as far as to say, philosophical.

If there is a reason for me to get so sentimental, it's probably because I am the sort of person who live in awe of science. Or rather, of nature. However, as a true urbanite, my stance on the magnificent works of nature have always been just to maintain a respectful distance. I was never really motivated to know more about how their intricate clocks tick. In a way, I am a half-hearted naturalist, one who laments about the declining state of our environment, and yet basks shamelessly in the luxury of the industrialized civilization. And I know, many of you are just like me.

Hence, I feel a pressing need to pause and share some of these little things in the book that bring us back to thinking and feeling what we have not been thinking and feeling for a long time. The trees, the birds, the insects, the raindrops... All that are so insignificant to our daily lives, and yet so unbelievably amazing, and so very crucial to our existence.

At least I think we owe it to them. Let us marvel for a while.