Mechanism for continuable calls to partially traverse a dynamic general tree

Mechanisms and methods for traversing trees are disclosed. A novel data structure for modeling a node that includes a unique node counter also is described. In certain embodiments of the inventions the unique node counter is a timestamp of sufficient granularity to render each timestamp in the tree unique. A node counter, in conjunction with the lineage of a specified continuation node may be used to locate an appropriate starting point within a tree in a continuation call when the specified continuation node no longer exists in the tree.