Neurobiology student Sara Matiş takes a close look at the world around her – and the lessons to be learned from nature. In this column, she is reminded how tree rings record history, and what they reveal about her own.

As I was strolling along the Portuguese beach, I was digging my toes in the sand, seeking its warmth. I picked up an uncovered seashell and stroked the ridges on its surface with my thumb. Time lets itself be quietly recorded, I reckoned. Growth ridges of shells and corals, tree rings, layers of time etched into nature.

In temperate climates, trees grow one ring per year. After the winter dormancy, the longer days and warmer weather of spring awaken the trees, which start forming new light-colored wood. Towards the end of the growth season (late summer and fall), the newly formed cells are smaller and have thicker walls, appearing as darker wood. These bands of so-called ‘earlywood’ and ‘latewood’ form an annual ring, which allows us to infer the age of trees.

There is more than the passage of years that is being recorded, though. When looking at a cut-open tree, you can get to know it quite intimately. For its entire life, the tree has been cataloguing its environment. Favorable periods led to wider rings, while harsh conditions led to thinner ones due to slower growth. Using overlapping ring patterns from different living trees and dead, preserved wood, we can reconstruct a continuous historical timeline of the climate with incredible precision – this chronology can go back over 10,000 years.

In this way, we can date archaeological wooden buildings or Viking ships, but we can also track past droughts, floods, solar cycles and even volcanic eruptions. Vast amounts of information, silently immortalized inside these amazingly resilient living organisms, everywhere around us.

‘Moving to another country, albeit temporarily, made me realize how much of a home the Netherlands has become’

I recently moved to Porto for a few months and I started thinking more about how the passage of time and different environments also affect me. Moving to another country, albeit temporarily, made me realize how much of a home the Netherlands has become. When did this Dutch seed planted inside of me get to grow into a tree that took over my heart?

Getting to know a new place can be quite confronting; you’re also getting to know a new version of yourself. That was also the case when I first came to the Netherlands for my studies. Moving on, growing up can feel so scary sometimes – what if I’m not ready to let go of my current identity and sense of self or to watch my experiences fade into distant memories?

As I was walking down the alluring promenade of the Portuguese beach, I embraced myself with my arms, slightly sticky from the salty air. They’re not gone, I’m reminded, they’re all living inside me – the kid and teenager I was, my Romanian upbringing, the laughs and tears, the people and places that touched me, the sunlight and the raindrops. They made me grow larger and stronger, with each new version of myself encompassing the ones that came before, just like the concentric rings of a tree or a shell. And I’m excited to see what Porto will etch into me.

Sara Matiş studies neurobiology at Radboud University and is a columnist for Vox. She currently lives in Porto and is originally from Timişoara, Romania.

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