To estimate the age of a Virginia dogwood tree, the diameter of the tree trunk is multiplied by a growth factor of 7. Following this formula, all dogwoods with a trunk 2.57 inches wide should be the same age as us. Trees don't follow formulas though. There are thousands of environmentalists and scientists who could explain to you the intricacies of the relationship between the development of a tree and its environment. I'm not one of those people, but what I can tell you is the stories etched in their bark and whispered by their leaves. I can tell you what the branches told each other before they were cleared to pave a road and I can tell you why the dogwood in the forest grows taller than the dogwood that stands alone.

I believe that if we all disappeared one day, and magically reappeared a decade later, the trees would've taken over Virginia. These forests have been speared through by miles of cement pathways, have had electric lines anchored down their spines. And still, the trees persist. Their stories continue, intertwined. Every summer when the storms roll in and the air hangs heavy with cicada calls, if you stand still and listen as the rain strikes around you, you can hear those stories. It's then, when you're surrounded by millennia worth of growth and growth which is to come, that reason the trees that stand in groves stand taller, seems obvious; they survived. Together.

For the past four years our roots have woven together, and we sit here today, at the brink of transplantation, taller. We've leaned on each other through loss and previously unfathomable change. We came of age when the world turned upside down and lit itself aflame, and we start this next leg of our journey with the smell of smoke still strong in the air. Yes, we survived, but we must acknowledge we've been changed. New growth forests are stronger, but the soil in which they are rooted is untested and unmarked. The world we are entering is one yet to be mapped. Old pathways have shattered. This is our chance to make new ones. 

You are sitting here atop your accomplishments, set to launch from them into a world that is thirsting for change. Make it. Build a robot that sutures wounds. Paint a mural to honor those we've lost. Translate a prayer. Tell a story. Save a life. Change a mind. What have we spent the past two years doing, if not learning how much better things need to be? There are problems that need solving and people here capable of finding the solutions. 

No matter where you're headed, the ground beneath your feet will become yours to protect and nourish. You're going to be planting your roots next to legacies that stretch centuries deep. This forest is yours, and this is our time to add to it.