![]() ![]() There, a short walk from where you park your car, you can stroll among these antediluvian beings as they imperceptibly twist, gnarl and reach towards the heavens. The greatest abundance of bristlecones can be found just east of the town of Bishop, California in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Bristlecones grow between 9,800 and 11,000 feet above sea level, where some people get dizzy and there are few other plants or animals that thrive. The tree’s Latin name is Pinus longaeva, and it grows exclusively in subalpine regions of the vast area known to geologists as the Great Basin, which stretches from the eastern Sierra Nevadas to the Wasatch Range, in Utah. The trees, he writes, “seem sentinel-like”.īristlecones are the longest living organism on earth. ![]() In the January 20 edition of the New Yorker, music writer Alex Ross writes about the trees and the scientists who are trying to unlock the secrets of the bristlecone’s unfathomable endurance. But to scientists, they are a trove of information, offering clues to near immortality and to the many ways that the earth’s climate has changed over the last 5,000 years. Gnarled and oftentimes squat, especially when compared to the majestic coastal redwoods and giant sequoias living near the coast further west, they hardly seem like mythical beings. To the untrained eye, the bristlecone seems hardly noteworthy. ![]() Highway 168 runs perpendicular to highway 395 out of Big Pine and leads up into the mountains to perhaps the most sacred place in California.įar above sea level, where the air is thin, live some of the most amazing organisms on the planet: the ancient bristlecone pines. Lying east of the Owens Valley and the jagged crags of the Sierra Nevadas, the White Mountains rise high above the valley floor, reaching over 14,000 feet, nearly as high as their far better-known relatives, the Sierra Nevadas. ![]()
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