{"id":621,"date":"2010-06-19T18:51:26","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T01:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/?p=621"},"modified":"2010-06-19T18:51:26","modified_gmt":"2010-06-20T01:51:26","slug":"bristlecone-pines-jigsaw-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/bristlecone-pines-jigsaw-puzzle\/","title":{"rendered":"Bristlecone Pines Jigsaw Puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bristlecone<\/a><\/p>\n

Bristlecone Pines – The Trees That Rewrote History
\n<\/strong>\u00a0NEW jigsaw puzzle<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was commissioned for this new mural\u00a0by the Crater Lake Institute, a most forward-thinking and\u00a0generous bunch.\u00a0\u00a0This painting is\u00a0one I’ve wanted to do for years, and now, with the mural complete,\u00a0we’ve also created a puzzle of the image.<\/p>\n

If you don’t know, and many people don’t, bristlecone pines are high elevation\u00a0mountaintop trees of the Great Basin in remote areas of\u00a0Nevada, eastern California and Utah. I think they’re the most beautiful trees on the planet, and the starkness of their high-elevation surroundings just adds to their appeal. We’ve studied them in Bryce Canyon and Great Basin National Parks, and the famous Schulman Grove in the White Mountains east of Bishop, CA on Forest Service lands. In all these places, we’ve felt a reverence, an almost religious experience in even casually walking among these ancient trees. How ancient? Well, some\u00a0still-living trees\u00a0have been dated to having begun their living\u00a0journey from a small seed almost 5000 years ago, making them\u00a0the oldest single plant species on the entire planet. Branches and downed trees have been dated to almost twice that age, and have helped scientists\u00a0better understand\u00a0climate data since the\u00a0Ice Age. That’s what the title, “The Trees that Rewrote History” refers to. With few wildfires and a high-desert arid climate\u00a0, downed bristlecone wood stays around. To put this into a perspective we can maybe grasp better,\u00a0these trees began life when there were woolly mammoths walking around North\u00a0America!<\/p>\n

Now, I just have to add this extra\u00a0bit\u00a0because it’s eaten at me for decades, and made educating people about\u00a0bristlecones with my art a mission for me. This is a direct quote from Wikipedia:\u00a0“In the Snake Range of eastern Nevada Donald R. Currey, a student of the University of North Carolina, was taking core samples of bristlecones in 1964. He discovered that “Prometheus” in a cirque below Wheeler Peak <\/em>(in what is now Great Basin National Park)\u00a0was over 4,000 years old. His coring tool broke, so the U.S. Forest service granted permission<\/strong> to<\/strong> cut down<\/strong> “Prometheus”. 4,844 rings were counted on a cross-section of the tree, making “Prometheus” at least 4,844 years old, the oldest non-clonal living thing known to man. … He never cut down another tree in his life.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Enough said: you guys understand, and I think some of you might have actually known Mr. Currey, who died in 2004. It’s a sad tale, is it not? Why is it that we keep repeating needless destruction of this little planet? Well, I think it’s because we simply don’t appreciate something until it’s gone or screwed up beyond repair. Like Prometheus – or the Gulf wetlands we were in only six weeks ago.<\/p>\n

So,\u00a0my bristlecone image is now a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle (made of recycled materials, I might add) with a good interpretive essay on the box’s back along with a species key. You can buy it online or by\u00a0email <\/a>or call us\u00a0at 1-888-437-2218 and we’ll ship it with an invoice. We’re trying to make it easier for readers who have difficulty with the web ordering-thing. If you’d like to bundle up several puzzles, it saves you shipping. Just tell us what you want.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading this week. This one meant a lot to me to finally see it in print – and it’s already selling – and educating – at some of the bristlecone parks.
\nLarry Eifert<\/p>\n

Click <\/a>here to go to the online blog this was to.<\/p>\n

Click <\/a>here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.<\/p>\n

Click<\/a> here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bristlecone Pines – The Trees That Rewrote History \u00a0NEW jigsaw puzzle I was commissioned for this new mural\u00a0by the Crater Lake Institute, a most forward-thinking and\u00a0generous bunch.\u00a0\u00a0This painting is\u00a0one I’ve wanted to do for years, and now, with the mural complete,\u00a0we’ve also created a puzzle of the image. If you don’t know, and many people … Continue reading Bristlecone Pines Jigsaw Puzzle<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[19,57,68,71,86],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-painting-post","category-uncategorized","tag-bristlecone-pines","tag-jigsaw-puzzles","tag-mountains","tag-murals","tag-parks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}