Trees

Live Oak (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T2, 10-24mm f/4 lens @ 10mm; 1/280th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

For whatever reason, old distinctive trees such as this attract me.  They seem to be reassuring to me in a sense that "what was, still is" and not everything about our world has so quickly changed.  Other words that come to my mind are strength, eternal, overreaching, stalwart, staid, forever, solid, covering, protective, enduring, unchanging, gnarled, legacy, history, and on and on...

I remember when I first saw the Giant Redwood trees in Muir Woods, just north of San Francisco.  I was amazed by not only its breadth, but as I craned my neck and looked up and up, its towering height seemed to never end.  Some grow to over 350 ft. tall!  

That amazement has only been surpassed by the first Giant Sequoia tree I saw in Yosemite National Park (later many more in Sequoia National Park).  I had no idea a tree could be that large.  According to Wikipedia, the Giant Sequoia's circumference can be 113 ft. (34 m).  That translates to be about 36 ft. (11 m) across!  How could someone not be amazed when first laying eyes upon such a sight?  I'm sure you've seen the images of a hole cut in the trunk of a Giant Sequoia and a car driving through.  The experts say a Giant Sequoia can live to be as much as 2700 years old.  Mother Nature seems to continually amaze in so many ways.  

In today's fast moving technological, computer driven and social media infested world, I think Mother Nature gets more and more pushed to the back of the public's minds and is largely ignored by more and more of the population who now reside in larger and larger metropolitan and urban areas.  I think that is a big mistake on many levels. Fundamentally so for the survival of our species. Sad.

When I walk up and touch an old tree I get a feeling and sense of the passage of time.  When I look up at its highest branches, I wonder what those branches may have witnessed over the tree's lifetime.  I'm glad the "wonder" is still there for me.  I hope I never lose the feeling of the "wonder" of nature.

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. 

                                                                                  Robert Louis Stevenson

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy nature and your surroundings!

Dennis A. Mook 

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