From small, delicate, beginnings…..
…..to a life really lived……
Amazing!
How such small seedlings grow to become such old and experienced trees…….!
What stories could they tell?
Who could have predicted the twists and turns, the traumas, the wounds, the opportunities, the new directions, the crises of survival, the creative responses to challenges, the relationships with the others in the forest?
How much more so for a human being?
Heroes Not Zombies 
I wonder if that elderly long lived tree has all the sensations of stress and strain that the gnarls and twists suggest? Might shed a new light on what an elderly years worn body might look and feel like inside and explain aches and pains?