CHE graduates, students, staff, and friends gather beneath a 700-year-old yew tree.

Eighty-five years of wisdom rests so lightly in my hands. Eighty five years of growth, witnessing, interacting with and influencing a changing environment. Eighty-five years of storms, sun, wind, rain. Eighty-five years of inhabitants, neighbours, communities come and gone.

The story lives on, embedded in the eighty-five rings of a slice of Yew tree branch that I was recently gifted at our CHE graduation ceremony [hosted by the Loenings at Ormiston, East Lothian, 13 September 2008].

I sit, fingers feeling rough edges, tracing shapes, spirals, curves, lines. Some rings blend into the others around, the edges blurring. Some years are hard to trace, and others show a richness of growth, a vibrant year filled with the right conditions to produce a strong, healthy supporting layer.

I used to teach youth about fire ecology, watersheds, climate change, and would take groups out to collect ponderosa pine core samples as a way to explore changing climates in a landscape – through the story found in a tree’s rings. A tree’s rings offer a metaphoric as well as tangible window into the health of an entire ecosystem.

As I hold this gift from a tree that put down roots over 700 years ago, this slice of a branch cut with love and polished with care and hope, I am left with a question: What will we – the CHE community – become in eighty-five years?

What rings of strength, of possibility, of ideas, change, and action will we provide for this deeply rooted tree that is the CHE? Our mutual nourishment of this living community will put in place the support system that will later allow for further branches of outreach, potential, and change.

This small slice of branch speaks volumes – and as a graduation certificate from a program rich in community, it now serves as my daily reminder of our potential for transformative growth.