Pando
I read a bit last night about a stand of quaking aspen in Utah, outside SLC. They refer to this stand as Pando (I spread in Latin) (Pandar? Pandare?) and its root system is the largest living entity in the world. It weighs something like 13 million pounds. It's a clonal colony and all 47,000 trunks in this stand are genetically identical. What's more, it's been alive, cloning itself repeatedly for approximately 80,000 years. Amazing. I think about those trees through the seasons; 80,000 winters, 80,000 summers. There they are, just standing there, quaking in the breeze, just being trees, or rather, the same tree over and over and over again. For some reason it just makes me a little sad. I don't know why.
Wasn't Aspen some kind of apple flavored soda from the 80's that Mariette Hartley or Cathy Lee Crosby hocked hawked on the TV?
Comments
is your aunt flo visitng? it is pretty awesome though (in a literal sense not moon zappa sorta way)
Posted by: ken | November 1, 2007 03:11 PM
No, but I think Mariette Hartley and Cathy Lee Crosby and Lindsay Wagner and Stefanie Powers and Jill St. John and Lynda Carter and all of Charlie's Angels share the same root system.
Posted by: Van Der Fah Fah | November 1, 2007 10:26 PM
Hocked on the TV? Like a pawn shop?
However, I think you're right -- I do remember some apple-based sodey-pop being *hawked* on the TV but some B-list celebrity. What the hell happened to that apple soda, anyway....?
Posted by: Joe | November 2, 2007 01:28 PM
http://www.petitiononline.com/aspen/petition.html
Posted by: ken | November 2, 2007 03:33 PM
Ken:
1.) "Is my Aunt Flo visiting?" What the hell? Guess what, having an emotion isn't a sign of hormonal imbalance. Think about that.
If I was a little sad, it was because I always get a little sad when I think about things in universal terms - like a time span of 80,000 years. It makes every little drama filled moment of every human life seem so ridiculously pointless. In that 80,000 year period our species rose up, took over the planet, built civilization after civilization, billions of people have lived and died, and we've reached the point of total self destruction and still those trees are just standing there, in Utah, being trees. Everything we've done is nothing compared to a stand of trees in Utah. The fact that they're in Utah is just another indication of that the great cosmic silliness is firmly intact. Think about it. On one hand, Pando seems to have figured something out that we haven't - the joy of just reaching a point of perfect harmony with one's environment. Then, there's the thought that this clonal colony has clung to life for 80,000 years, without change, without growth on an evolutionary scale. Sure, it's adapted to a multitude of different environments - it was probably surrounded by glaciers when it sent its first shoot up out of the earth, but it's still the same tree today that it was 80,000 years ago. It both thrives and stagnates. If nirvana can only be achieved once the last metaphorical blade of grass has reached enlightenment, what hope can there be when we live in a world with Pando? Or, has Pando achieved it all on it's own? Symbolically speaking, what is the Pando entity? What does it mean, o Bodhisattva Ken?
2.) Your refusal to sign that petition to bring back Aspen soda is selfish. You would deny thousands of people with too much time on their hands a brief moment of joy as the fizzy apple flavored concoction greets their tongues again after a thirty year respite, a long lost friend come home again. Therefore, I revoke your Bodhisattva card. You are not acting compassionately, your ego is getting in the way. Go meditate on that for a little while.
Posted by: The Angry Young Man | November 3, 2007 10:24 AM
suck it.
Posted by: kenhisattva | November 3, 2007 10:47 PM
Oh no you don't, Kengi. I want a real answer to my dilemma. Talk to me. What does the Pando entity mean to us as believers/practitioners of the dharma? Give me some honesty here.
Posted by: The Angry Young Man | November 3, 2007 11:44 PM