For most of the week the forecast for Saturday was cold and rainy, but by Friday things were looking up for a weekend climb with my daughter at a huge boundary-line willow oak I had spotted a few weeks ago. The day dawned bright, sunny, and warm as we headed out for a special breakfast with friends. After breakfast we headed to the tree (http://binged.it/xHVepa). The willow oak is on the edge of a field near a lazy little stream lined by raspberry thickets and winged elm saplings.



The trunk of this huge tree is 18 feet, 8 inches in circumference and there is barbed wire embedded in the bark near the center of the trunk leading me to believe it has been marking the boundary of this farmer’s field for at least 100 years – maybe closer to 200!







The average crown spread of the tree is 88 feet. It’s not terribly tall – maybe 60-70 feet, but when I showed my daughter pictures of 3 potential trees to climb today she immediately chose this one. It is a beautiful specimen for sure!



The warm day and night temperatures this week have awakened the spring peepers and they were still singing at 10:00am when we got to the tree. Setting the lines was remarkably easy since our goal was not height for this climb. While I got the lines situated, Sarah explored the area and found a teeny bird’s nest. Before long she was climbing up to the first branch to hang out.











At about 35 feet up, the main trunk splits into 4 trunks, which form a cool four-pillared chamber in the center of the tree. From the ground I wouldn’t have guessed that there would be so much open space in there. There is years of accumulated compost and acorn shells lining the “floor” and 2 “benches” facing each other at the perfect height created where the trunks join each other. It made the perfect spot to enjoy an early lunch before heading home for the rest of the day’s adventures.

Looks like a super tree, a monster for sure!
-AJ

What a wonderful tree! Looks like you could spend all day just moving around in it and exploring.

How did you get your pictures embedded? When I used the attachment function I ended up with the frames around them.

-Leslie

Hi Leslie, since you can only upload three attachments per post, I put these pictures on my Picasa photo sharing site which has 1GB of free space. If I right click on the pictures in Picasa and choose "view picture" the picture opens in a new window without anything surrounding it. Then I can copy the unique web address in the address bar and embed that in the canopy chatter post between the [img] tags, and it will show up in the post without a box around it. You can put as many pictures in a post as you want that way. It might work with Flicker, or other photo sharing sites, too, as long as you can identify the web address of the actual picture.

Thanks! I never would have figured that out on my own

-Leslie

I love the photo of you and your daughter! Great tree, too.

Great tree, and great smiles! Thanks Patrick for sharing.