Speaking of trees here is something about Treaty Oak:
For 20 years I lived within 1/2 block from the majesty of this beautiful oak. I would take my dogs to the park surrounding it (in the middle of downtown Austin) for a little romp. It was a place to go and meditate or just hang out. Since 1989 this once magnificent tree has struggled to survive.Treaty Oak Gets a Spa Day
Austin American-StatesmanOn a frigid, windy morning, Austin's most famous and beloved tree was treated to the warm and loving care of city arborists for its annual maintenance.
The Treaty Oak, a 600-year-old tree legendary as the alleged meeting place for Stephen F. Austin and Native Americans in the 1800s, is in the tree Hall of Fame. It stands 50 feet tall and once had a 120-foot canopy under which Austinites proposed, meditated and prayed. It has been lovingly referred to as "the most perfect specimen of a tree in North America" and is the last of the Council Oaks, a group of trees considered sacred before much of Austin was settled.
The oak was nearly destroyed in 1989 and has since lived the life of a weary icon.
The Gold Puppy has a wonderful posting, "Palms Facing Up", about changing, growing, stretching, and reaching of trees and the analogy to us humans in our quest for growth. I read it earlier today before I saw the article about Treaty Oak. Now I think about the struggle for life along with the desire to grow. Each of us struggle in our daily lives (some of us more than others), but eventually we all have life changing struggles.
It took hundreds of humans to save this one tree that we deemed worthy. Shade canopies were erected to eliminate the stress brought on by the hot summer days, misters wound throughout the branches to spray water on the tree, charcoal was put into the ground to draw out the poison, and hundreds of people came to pray for the tree, leave flowers and cards for it, and just to marvel at the once magnificent tree. The struggle to save this tree has been mighty. It may not be a beautiful as it once was, but it is still reaching upward, looking for the sun.
There is a lesson in this story for us all of us even though it may be a difficult one to follow. No matter how much we struggle we should continue reaching upward and outward, changing with life in order to truly live. No matter how frightening the journey is we must try.
3 comments:
I love what you're saying, no matter how hard the task, we must fight to keep growing, reaching upward. Well said, Cheryl. If we didn't fight to keep the old groves in the Western states we would have forests to admire.
Nature has lessons for us written in many ways.
Amen to your post, Cheryl. We germans are total tree lovers since thousands of years. All our fairytales have to do with woods. Deep dark woods, mostly. Have you been in the Black Forest? But there also have been competitions of who found the very oldest solitairy tree, shown on TV. I think it was a lime tree, almost 950 years old. Yes, growing and stretching upwards, good image...
I will see what random things I will come up with.
We Texans are very protective of our trees. I think it is because we don't have so many tall, stately ones that we treasure the ones we do have. There are lots of scrub oaks around, but to find live oaks that grow so large are special. We are a bit warm and on the arid side here so from Austin north-, south-, and westward we are especially attune to trees.
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