THE TREE THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE LIVED

Quiet Canines Podcast · Aug 24, 2026 · 1m

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For centuries, a single Sitka spruce stood on the banks of the Yakoun River in Haida Gwaii.

But this tree was different.

Its needles were golden instead of green, the result of an extraordinarily rare genetic mutation that should have made survival almost impossible. To the Haida people, however, Kiidk’yaas was far more than a botanical curiosity. Its story reached back through generations of oral history to a boy who disobeyed his grandfather, looked back, and was transformed into a tree.

Then, in 1997…