Symbol of endurance in one little planting

From Babylon to Berlin and from ancient King Nebuchadnezzar to the town’s horticultural advisory committee.

That’s the scope of the divide between the day a bald cypress seedling poked into the daylight in a southern swamp and Tuesday, when that great tree’s immediate offspring was returned to the earth in Stephen Decatur Park.

Two thousand six-hundred thirty years ago, give or take a century or two, is when researchers estimate this progenitor of the sapling planted Tuesday began life in what became the Black River Swamp in North Carolina.

Throughout the millennia since then, empires rose and fell, civilizations were founded, cataclysmic events occurred, great battles were won, lost and fought again, and the march of human achievement continued through the Dark Ages to the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution  to — being able to type “oldest bald cypress” into your internet browser and being rewarded with volumes of information.

This particular tree, for instance, isn’t just the oldest of its kind in the eastern United States, it is the fifth oldest tree species of any kind in the world, according to the Nature Conservancy, which protects it and other flora and fauna in North Carolina’s Black River Reserve.

That connection, brought about with the help of the Maryland Coastal Bays Program, the horticulture committee’s “Keep Berlin Cool” tree-planting campaign, Joan Maloof of Berlin and founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network and a host of others, is so much more than a nice little tree in the park.

It is a symbol of unfathomable endurance and resilience through the best and worst of times. Viewed for what it truly is, this little tree should be seen as nothing short of inspirational. And, as far as Keeping Berlin Cool, there’s nothing cooler than that.