Imagine you’re arriving in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest just before sunset to find a peaceful spot to camp for the night. As you make your way through the curved dirt roads, all around you are white trunks reaching up into the sky from the sagebrush.
What lays in front of you may look like a pleasant enough grove of trees, but it’s not— not exactly.
This is not your standard forest. Each towering white trunk you see before is not an individual tree; rather, all of these trunks belong to the same tree — a singular Quaking Aspen whose colossal subterranean root system has given rise to over 40,000 trunks, or, stems.
This massive collection of root, stems, and leaves is affectionately nicknamed the Trembling Giant (“Trembling” for the species’ notably light and fluttery leaves; “Giant” for obvious reasons). It’s better known as Pando, Latin for “I Spread.” And spread it has; Pando’s shoots occupy over 106 acres of land. All together, the tree weighs 13 million pounds. It is the most massive single organism on Earth.
Something this big didn’t grow overnight. Pando’s heart and soul, so to say, live underground, where its root system has braved the harsh conditions of the natural world for thousands of years — up to 80,000 years, according to some scientists! (Though there’s no full consensus on Pando’s exact age, it is safe to say that Pando is among the oldest living organisms on Earth.)
Unfortunately Pando hasn’t been doing so well since humans appeared on the scene.
As human impact drove out the area’s natural apex predators like bears, wolves, and mountain lions while simultaneously introducing bovine to ranch, researchers began to notice that Pando’s older stems were dying faster than new stems could grow and mature in their place. Today, Pando’s natural attempts to reproduce, more often than not, come to an early close in the digestive tracks of overabundant grazers hungry for tender Aspen shoots.
Humans also love to carve into Aspens’ beautiful white bark, introducing avenues for pathogens to invade and attack the tree’s health. Aspen has thin skin and is particularly vulnerable to disease and infection from carving compared to other trees.
I had the immense pleasure of camping nestled in Pando’s stems last night, at a primitive site lush with flowering bluebonnets and aromatic sage brush.
A variety of insects fluttered by as we turned out the lights. In the morning, birds overhead sang to each other in greeting of the new day. All the while, we marveled at the fact that for a night, we were eating, sleeping, and laughing amongst the arms of an ancient giant.
Knowing it’s already stood on these grounds for thousands of years, I hope Pando continues to provide to people and animals what I experienced in it lush, surreal expanse for many more thousands of years to come.
Going out into nature never fails to teach me a lesson in gratitude and amazement of what the Earth provides — its mind-boggling, incredible, beautiful glory. I always leave renewed in my commitment to protect our natural world and live as sustainably as possible, with the planet in mind.
Because Aspen forests like Pando support an incredible biodiversity that stimulates all of the senses.
And when the Aspen are gone, so too will go the other forms of life that it provides for.
