A tree ring records a year without recording the name humans gave it.

A tree ring is a complete record of a year with none of the naming. Rainfall, fire, crowding, and stress are all written accurately, while everything that made the year significant to people is entirely absent. Two systems of record are running over the same period and they have almost nothing in common.

It is worth knowing that the account you keep of a year is one account among possible ones. The year you would describe as terrible may have been, on other measures, the one where something grew. Not as consolation, but as a reminder that your summary of a period is a selection, and selections can be revisited later with more information.