“I Was Born!”: Personal Experience Narratives and Tree-Ring Marker Years

Abstract

This essay, co-written by a dendrochronologist (Nick) and a narrative theorist (Erin), considers how these two disciplines can meet to illuminate alternative narratives in tree rings. At the basis of our conversation is a desire to tease apart tree experience and the signification entangled within human practices of storytelling. First, Nick explains recent developments in dendrochronology and critical physical geography (CPG) that call attention to the ways in which tree-ring sciences often naturalize imperial narratives and demand alternative methodologies. Second, Erin dives into the imperial narratives of two case study tree bodies, throwing light upon the human and vegetal stories that these dominant narratives obscure and silence. Third, Nick turns to an experiment in critical participatory action research (CPAR) to suggest an approach to tree-ring dating—material dating—that takes its cues not from imperial histories but from a simultaneous interest in community engagement, anticolonial scholarship, and tree agency and signification. Fourth, Erin explains how material dating, via foregrounding personal experience, stands to produce a narrative more sensitive to a particular tree’s situated experience and better able to foment understanding among tree body viewers for the tree as a living and communicating organism. Finally, Nick and Erin use material dating to produce an alternative narrative for one of our case studies and provide directions for other scholars to replicate our process.