Rebecca Solnit on Trees and the Shape of Time

“Trees are an invitation to think about time and to travel in it the way they do, by standing still and reaching out and down.”

Two hundred and two years after Walt Whitman’s birth, I traveled to the granite emblem of his life and death. Standing sentinel across from the tomb’s entrance are two towering trees — something the poet, who likened his most beloved friend to a tree, would have appreciated. Saplings when the tomb was built, their granite-colored bark is now scarred with the names of g...