Old Survivor
Oakland’s last old-growth redwood, in Leona Heights, Oakland.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion | Jenny Odell | subject | The Introduction opens in the Oakland hills with this hidden, twisted, 93-foot redwood on a steep rocky slope in Leona Park, found by a naturalist in 1969. |
How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell (2019)
Source: How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion · How to Do Nothing · Readwise highlight
it’s Oakland’s only old-growth redwood left standing, a miraculous five-hundred-year-old holdover from the time before all of the ancient redwoods were logged following the Gold Rush.
- Role: subject
- In the book: The Introduction opens in the Oakland hills with this hidden, twisted, 93-foot redwood on a steep rocky slope in Leona Park, found by a naturalist in 1969. It survived logging by seeming useless, which Odell links to Zhuangzi’s useless tree and uses as her image of resistance-in-place and of witness and memorial.
- Why it matters: It is the book’s governing metaphor and the first place she asks the reader to attend to.