I don’t know how old this tree is, but the fence must be older.
When this guy was but a wee sapling, it must have chanced to grow its trunk in between one of the squares in the fence. Or maybe someone put it there? Who knows.
But it grew right through it. It’s a pretty big tree now. What surprises me the most is how intact the trunk is just a few inches above the intersection and obvious trunk-wound. I guess I always imagined that trees grew up, like if someone was pushing it up from beneath. But if that were true, the trunk would be mangled the whole way up, and probably the tree would not have survived.
Of course, now that I think about it, it’s stupid to think a tree would grow like that. But since I’ve never watched a tree grow, I still had the mental model of tree growth that I’ve had since I was 3.
Which begs the question: what other juvenile mental models do we still have, that we’d abandon as absurd if we ever thought about it, but that we just don’t ever think about?
I don’t know how old this tree is, but the fence must be older.
When this guy was but a wee sapling, it must have chanced to grow its trunk in between one of the squares in the fence. Or maybe someone put it there? Who knows.
But it grew right through it. It’s a pretty big tree now. What surprises me the most is how intact the trunk is just a few inches above the intersection and obvious trunk-wound. I guess I always imagined that trees grew up, like if someone was pushing it up from beneath. But if that were true, the trunk would be mangled the whole way up, and probably the tree would not have survived.
Of course, now that I think about it, it’s stupid to think a tree would grow like that. But since I’ve never watched a tree grow, I still had the mental model of tree growth that I’ve had since I was 3.
Which begs the question: what other juvenile mental models do we still have, that we’d abandon as absurd if we ever thought about it, but that we just don’t ever think about?