This Tree Was a Million Years in the Making

 

This Tree Was a Million Years in the Making

This is a song about how, when you think about it, the existence of a tree (or anything else, for that matter) depends on the confluence of millions and millions of events, going back millions and millions of years. I mean, like, what if Ancestor X didn't meet Ancestor Y back in the stone ages? You wouldn't've been born. Maybe if Ancestor X decided to go take a dump instead of going on a walk in the woods (where he met Ancestor Y), they wouldn't've met and you wouldn't've been born. 

Even a single rain drop could determine the course of certain parts of history. The very tree you see in front of you - its existence may have depended on that teeny tiny rain drop millions and millions ago falling in just the right place, giving the tree's ancestor just enough water to start growing. 

I guess you could say this bears some relationship to The Butterfly Effect - y'know, the butterfly who flaps its wings in Argentina and creates a big old storm down the line in another part of the world? It's stuff like that.

When you think of it, each and every one of us's existences is highly improbable, having depended on so many events happening just right and in just the right order. It's almost a little trippy to think about.

The lyrics are:

This tree was a thousand years in the making

Across an ocean of time
Something, in motion, sublime
Planted this specific tree
That stands in front of me

This tree was a thousand years in the making

One rain drop was all it took
It stopped clocks, and the world shook
It was a million years ago
It was determined: This tree would grow

Something was set in motion in oceans of
Time; someone had a notion of potions of
Love that were bent on notions of devotion
To a future tree...it was set in motion
It was a million years ago, maybe
That whatever chain of events came to be
So a million years later, it grew here
It's now home for birds, whose singing you hear

This stream went left or went right
It would run into the night
Into the tree that would grow

This was a million years ago

This tree was a million years in the making

Here's the alternative player thingy, in case you wanna use it: