Planting a Thousand Thousand-Year-Old Trees in Edmonton
The Long Now Foundation
Dustin Bajer opens with a scene from the future: walking down a dark street, you turn a corner and find an ancient tree planted a thousand years earlier, in 2024. What would it be like to live in a future full of trees that old, and how would the people living among them relate to time and to their responsibility to the future? Bajer's starting point is that much of our cultural narrative has turned dystopian in recent years, and that to cultivate better futures we first need to be able to imagine them.
The Secret Long Tree Society
Bajer belongs to a group in Edmonton that aims to foster long-term thinking and responsibility by propagating, distributing, and tending a thousand trees that can each live a thousand years. They call themselves the Secret Long Tree Society, though Bajer admits the name is "a little bit cheeky." The group is open about what it is doing and invites others to join. Much of its activity is conversation: members spend a lot of time discussing both the philosophy of planting thousand-year-old trees and how it could actually be done. Bajer describes it as an interesting thought experiment that the group is trying to make real.
Choosing Species for an Extreme Climate
Location shapes the project. Edmonton, as Bajer notes, is the northernmost city of a million people on the continent, with temperatures from about −40°C in winter to +40°C in summer. That range limits which species can survive there for a thousand years. The group has settled on two candidates: Ginkgo biloba and the Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine, Pinus aristata.
To show the scale involved, Bajer holds up about 1,500 bristlecone pine seeds, each capable of living more than a thousand years. By his own arithmetic, that handful represents about 1.5 million years of potential growth.
Distributing Seeds and Crediting Propagators
The group has built resources to support the project, including step-by-step propagation videos. Seeds are handed out locally, and volunteers grow them into seedlings. The propagators' names are attached to the trees they raise, so each tree carries a link to the person who started it.
Where Do You Plant a Thousand-Year-Old Tree?
Bajer calls this one of the project's biggest questions. One approach is to look for places in the city that are likely to stay undisturbed. The group is also interested in the opposite approach: planting in parts of Edmonton that are expected to change a great deal. There, Bajer suggests, the trees could act as anchor points, reminders of the bigger picture amid rapid change.
Trees That Carry Stories
Looking at the trees Edmontonians already love, the group noticed that most are tied to particular people, places, or events. In short, the trees people love have stories, and they reflect the people who planted and tended them. That leads to a question the group is still asking: what story are they telling themselves through the trees they are planting now?
The Freedom of a Project You Will Never Finish
Bajer says he loves projects whose end he will never see. In some ways this takes a lot of pressure off, and it also opens up unusual possibilities. The group has been playing with the idea of a thousand-year birthday party for some of its trees. People who receive a seedling would get a ticket, and anyone who shows up in a thousand years with that ticket gets in.
Another idea is to collect a donation of a couple of dollars per tree and place it in an endowment fund to accrue interest for a thousand years. Bajer poses this as an open question rather than a plan: how could such a fund support the trees, and how could it support other long-term thinking projects in the future?
Less About Trees, More About Culture
Bajer cites Stewart Brand's saying that long-term thinking is the opposite of long-term planning. The group is, on paper, planning to plant a thousand thousand-year-old trees. But Bajer says that the further they go, the more they realize the project is less about the trees and more about cultivating the conversations and culture needed to propagate better futures.
He closes by encouraging the audience to think about the kind of future they would like to propagate, and to start something "ambitious and quirky and weird" that goes beyond what they can currently do, because, in his words, "it's worth it."
It's the future and you're walking down a dark street when you turn a corner and you come across an ancient tree that was planted there a thousand years ago, in the year 2024. What would it be like to live in a future with ten thousand-year-old trees? What would be their relationship to time and their sense of responsibility to the future?
It seems to me that a lot of our cultural narrative has turned dystopian over the last few years, and I've come to believe that in order to cultivate better futures, we need to be able to imagine them.
My name is Dustin Bajer, and I belong to a group in the city of Edmonton that is trying to foster long-term thinking and responsibility by propagating, distributing, and tending a thousand thousand-year-old trees. We call ourselves the Secret Long Tree Society, though that's a little bit cheeky; we're pretty open with what we're trying to do, and in fact we'd love to invite you to be a part of it.
We spend a lot of time hanging out and having conversations around the philosophy of planting thousand-year-old trees and how we might actually be able to practically do it. It's generally a pretty interesting thought experiment that we're trying to make a reality.
For a little bit of context, we're in Edmonton, which is the most northern city of a million on the continent. We have a pretty extreme climate, ranging from minus 40 degrees Celsius in the winter to plus 40 in the summer, which somewhat limits the species that can live for a thousand years here. The two that we've been looking at are Ginkgo biloba and the Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine, Pinus aristata.
In my hand here I'm actually holding 1,500 bristlecone pine seeds, each capable of living for more than a thousand years. So if my math is correct, that represents about 1.5 million years of growth.
And we've been putting together different kinds of resources to support this project, including step-by-step propagation videos. And so we distribute our seeds locally and we get folks to grow them out, and their names are attached to those trees as the propagators.
A big question, obviously, is where do you plant a thousand-year-old tree? One strategy might be to find spaces in the city that are likely to go untouched, but we're also interested in finding locations throughout the city that are expected to see lots of change, and perhaps these trees could actually act as anchor points to remind us of, you know, the bigger picture. And so this is actually a photograph from this morning.
When taking a look at a lot of the trees that we love here in Edmonton, we've realized that most of them are attached to specific people or places or events. And so, in short, the trees we love have stories, and they're kind of a reflection of the people that plant them and the people that tend them. And so an interesting question for us is: what story are we telling ourselves with the trees that we're planting?
I love a long-term project like this. I love a project that I'm never going to see the end of, which, I mean, sort of alleviates a lot of pressures in some ways, but also it allows you to do some really interesting things. Like, we've been playing around with the idea of hosting a thousand-year birthday party for some of our trees, and in order to do that, we're thinking about handing out tickets as people get their thousand-year-old seedling, and if you show up in a thousand years with your ticket, you're in.
Or what if we could take a couple dollar donation for each tree and we could put that into an endowment fund, and we could let that accrue interest for a thousand years? How could that support the trees? How could that support long-term thinking projects in the future?
Stewart Brand has this great saying that long-term thinking is the opposite of long-term planning. And it's true that we're planning on, you know, planting a thousand thousand-year-old trees, but the further into this we go, the more we've realized that it's less about the trees and it's more about cultivating the kinds of conversations and the culture that is necessary in order to propagate better futures.
And so I encourage you to think about the kind of future you'd like to propagate, and start something ambitious and quirky and weird that is beyond what you're capable of doing now, because it's worth it.
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