Tree life shouldn’t be bad at all, of course being born in a nice place helps.
Being a tree born in the Dolomites involves a certain amount of responsibility (just think of the expectations that people who visit these places have), but at the same time it is synonymous with pride, harmony, longevity, indispensability and creativity.
Stone pine near Lerosa, at the feet of the iced Croda Rossa.
Creativity, of course, because the fact of having to stay all their life still in the same place does not necessarily imply lack of imagination and improvisation, neither on the part of the tree, nor on the part of those who approach it.
Stone pines
You can be a majestic cirmolo (Pinus cembra), or as the anglophones call them “stone pine” and grow precisely on a rock thanks to the inadvertence of some squirrel or the greed of a nutcracker. What a view from up there!!
Brave stone pine.
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Tree life and life on the tree.
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World War 1 lookout digged inside a stone pine, wich is still alive.
Or, although dying, have such a fascinating form that it will arouse the irrepressable desire to climb over it.
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Climbing a dead tree.
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Detail of a “naked” stone pine.
Larches
So snubled in winter because without needles and without color, as magnified and admired during spring and autumn, when the flowers adorn the delicate branches and needles are colored of the thousand shades of gold.
Being a larch (Larix decidua) at the end is not bad at all.
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A golden branch of a larch in front of the pyramid of Antelao.
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Larch flowers.
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An old larch in summer.
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Larches in autumn.
Firs
Being a spruce (Picea abies) in a forest of the Dolomites would not appear to be such an extraordinary thing, but in reality being indispensable for the smooth functioning of the “woods system” is not a simple thing at all!
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Spruce with many holes.
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A spruce with holes of a black woodpeacker.
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Detail of a hole of a black woodpeacker.
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Girdlinger made by woodpeackers.
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Bark of a spruce eated by red deers.
Have you ever stopped to observe the elegance and the mysterious aspect that the “columnars” fir trees have? Especially in winter, when their genetically functional branches are tilted to 45° in an even more obvious way to slide the snow , the charm of these trees is even more powerful.
Some of these trees are also “resonant” firs, the violin makers transform them into violins, cellos and other musical instruments and the tree becomes therefore a piece of art which produces art.
Columnar spruce in front of the south face of Tofana di Rozes.
Sometimes then….. a spruce can become the anchor for an abseil…. creativity or necessity, which can go hand-in-step!
Abseil anchor on a spruce near an iced waterfall.
Beeches
Last, just because we started from higher elevation, is the beech (Fagus sylvatica): proud, long-lived, reassuring. It does not enjoy the view that the “Stone pines” enjoys, dominating the high mountain pastures, but certainly a beech grove is a special place. In fall it could make whole generations of children happy!
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Sky pillars: beeches in winter.
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“Patriarch” beech in Alpago during a snowstorm.
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Playing with the beech leaves.
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Beech in autumn in San Vito di Cadore.
Trees of these and other species, ancient trees or first levers, trees who have important or indistinct bearing in the vastness of a forest…. living beings in short, that with their tree lives enrich our own lives.
