1. The ancient mystery

In the 17th century, Jean-Baptiste van Helmont set out to answer a question that sounded simple but carried immense depth:
Where does a tree’s matter truly come from?

To find out, he planted a young willow in a carefully weighed pot of soil. He watered it for five years only with rainwater.
At the end, the tree had gained more than 70 kilos, while the soil had lost only a few grams¹.

The result defied the agricultural logic of his era.
Van Helmont concluded that the tree’s substance must come from the water…
but his discovery was only the beginning of the truth.

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2. The modern view: air as architecture

Centuries later, Richard Feynman reframed the question with childlike clarity:

“Where does that wood come from? Where does that mass come from?”

His answer became famous²:
“Most of the tree comes from the air.”

Modern biochemistry confirmed it³.

During photosynthesis, leaves capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air, draw hydrogen from the water, and —with the sun’s energy— build carbon-based structures that become glucose, cellulose, lignin, wood.
That carbon, the very backbone of trunks and branches, does not rise from the soil but descends from the sky.

This leads to something almost unbelievable:
more than 95% of a tree’s biomass comes from air and light.

— As if one were decoding a miracle every day… you know, life is just that simple.

Wood you can touch is made of molecules that once floated invisibly.
A forest is air rearranged.
Its solidity is celestial architecture.

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3. The deeper connection: roots below, body above

Symbolically, the tree has always been a bridge between worlds.
Its roots remind us of where we come from;
its canopy points toward where we are meant to go.

But here lies a subtler truth:
even though the tree stands firmly anchored in the ground, its body is built from above —from sunlight falling each day as silent nourishment.

The soil gives support, minerals, structure.
But its form, its volume, its real weight,
are children of light.

This realization reshapes what we believe about nature,
and simultaneously, what we believe about ourselves.

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4. The metaphor of inner growth

If a tree —so solid, so heavy, so enduring— is made of air and light…
what does that say about our own growth?

We were taught that what sustains us is the material:
circumstances, origins, environment, past events.

But the tree teaches the opposite.
What matters most does not come from below, but from above.
Not from what we stand on, but from what we breathe.

• Our beliefs are the invisible molecules that become our wood.
• Our ideas are our internal sap.
• Our thoughts are the light that solidifies us.
• Our worldview is the CO₂ that builds our inner structure.

What we are today is largely the echo of what we have allowed into the mind.
And what we will be tomorrow depends on the quality of that light.

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5. Questions for the reader

— What ideas are you breathing every day?
— What thoughts are turning into “wood” inside you?
— What light is shaping you… or weakening you?
— Are you nourishing your life from depth or from clarity?

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6. Final reflection

Trees remind us that life is sustained from above,
and that what seems solid is really the result of the unseen.

Roots in the earth to remember where we begin.
A body in the sky to remember where we are headed.

This is why a forest at dusk is so moving:
it reveals that light can become life,
and that we, when we let the right light in,
can grow in the same direction.

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Recommended Bibliography

¹ Van Helmont, Jean Baptiste. Ortus Medicinae (1648).
² Feynman, Richard. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I, Ch. 1–3.
³ Taiz, Lincoln & Zeiger, Eduardo. Plant Physiology and Development.

Additional article:
— Where Does the Mass of a Tree Come From? — Nature Education (2014).