A Letter to the Last Century-Old Tree
A short note to a tree that is still standing somewhere on the finca, and that I hope we have the good sense to leave alone.
I do not know your age. I only know you have outlived everyone who planted you.
Summary
- A reflective letter addressed to one of the oldest living coffee trees on the finca.
- It acknowledges the cost of clearing old trees and expresses a commitment to restraint.
- It is a personal note, written to make the story feel human.
Key takeaways
- A project built on old trees owes them respect.
- Not every old tree should be dug.
- Reflection keeps ambition honest.
Dear tree,
I walked past you this morning and did not stop. That is the problem with trees like you. You are so familiar that it is easy to forget how unusual you are.
What I know about you
I do not know exactly how old you are. No one does. The farmers say you were here before the road. Marvin says you have always been in the same spot, as far as anyone remembers. Your trunk is thick, and your branches reach farther than they ought to. In the dry season, you still carry cherries, and in the wet, you hold your leaves like a person holding a coat.
You have seen harvests I will never see. You have been picked by hands that are long gone. You have been rained on, shaken by tremors, and dusted with ash from the volcano.
What we took from your neighbors
I should be honest. We have dug out several of your companions, and turned their roots into objects. I do not say that lightly. They were here a long time. Some of them stood on the spot where the patio now lies.
I wish I could say it felt neutral. It did not. There was a moment, when the first big root came out of the ground, when the earth seemed to let go reluctantly. I have not forgotten it.
What I promise
I promise not to dig you for your roots. You still bear fruit, and you are still part of the finca. You are not a resource. You are a neighbor.
I promise to plant new trees where the old ones have fallen. I promise that what we make from the roots we have dug will be made carefully and treated as an inheritance, not a commodity.
I also promise that if a day comes when you are done, and you must come out, we will not burn you.
What I hope
I hope that someone, in a hundred years, will stand where I am standing and look at a coffee tree and wonder what it has seen. I hope the trees we plant now will be that tree.
I hope you will go on producing small, red, sweet cherries for as long as you can.
A last thought
We are all temporary, even the ones that last a century. The best we can do is leave the ground in better shape than we found it.
Yours, with respect,
Josh
For the story of how we came to this, see The Morning We Almost Burned a Century of Coffee Roots.
Common questions
Are you digging up every old tree?
No. Healthy trees that still produce are left standing.
Why write a letter to a tree?
It is a way of remembering that the material we work with came from living things that deserve respect.
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