The Tree That Learned to Wait

In the White Mountains of California, a bristlecone pine named Methuselah has been alive for nearly 5,000 years. Dendrochronologist Edmund Schulman discovered it in 1957 while studying tree rings at the University of Arizona — and found that this gnarled, wind-scoured tree was already ancient when Moses led Israel out of Egypt. It grows above 10,000 feet, in rocky alkaline soil where little else survives, battered by brutal winters and blazing summers.…