Written by: Pond
The oldest tree in Equestria is not located in a forest. The oldest tree in Equestria is in the heart of Canterlot, the blossoming capital city. It is not large or majestic or even green. It is a shriveled thing, a brown thing, a gnarled thing. To call it beautiful would be laughable. To call it simply “old” or “ancient” would be an insult. Few have ever seen it, and even fewer have ever loved it. It stands dusty and forgotten.
Its trunk is blackened with age and riddled with holes from so many insects that feasted on its pulpy flesh for thousands upon thousands of generations. No birds have nested in its branches; no squirrels have used it for acrobatic feats and flights of fancy; no pony has rested in its shade and marveled at the magical world around them. But it is not a lonely tree, could trees be lonely. There is nothing to be lonely about.
Would it have been better to be amongst its brothers and sisters, to create a canopy of color that dapples the forest floor? Would it have been better to be able to grow as large as it liked and spread its roots and its seeds and its leaves? Would it have been better to be cut down in its youth and turned into a coffee table? Perhaps, perhaps. Life is full of threads, of missed opportunities, of paths never taken.
There is a window in the corner and from it, the tree looks down upon all of Canterlot. From that window, it has seen the follies of ponies greater than Celestia or Luna or the newly crowned Twilight Sparkle. All of them had paid no attention to the tree, but the tree had paid attention to them. What else was there to possibly do with oneself over millennia except pay attention? The tree had watched an endless stream of ponies and other creatures flow by the window like a millennia long river.
There were droughts and wars and pestilence. There were galas, there was prosperity, there was magic. As the tree looks down, it can see it all.
The Sacking of Canterlot, a dry year.
The First Galloping Gala, a wet year.
Wet, dry, dry, dry, wet, wet.
Everything that ever was is recorded in its rings -- a living time capsule that contains more information than the entirety of all the libraries in Equestria combined. But it will never be seen by the eyes of ponykind, not until the rivers run dry and the fields lay fallow and the sun burns out. For the tree is the watcher of Equestria and only with Equestria’s end will it die.