The Big Tree at Goose Island State Park on Texas' Gulf Coast. -- Photo by Pat Bean
“I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. — Henry David Thoreau
Travels With Maggie
One of my favorite places to escape for a few days when I’m visiting my son on the Texas Gulf Coast is Goose Island State Park, where I always take time to visit “The Big Tree.”
She a fat old broad, more than a 1,000 years old. Her special status is a result of her massive girth – 35-foot trunk circumference with a 90-foot crown – than her 45 foot height. Many live oaks are taller. It’s the combination, note the tree experts, that won her the title, State Champion Coastal Live Oak, in 1969.
Trees fascinate me. This is evident when I take a trip down memory lane with my photos, I find I’ve captured many of their images with my camera
You now have proof. Pat Bean is a tree hugger. This tree grows in Custer State Park in South Dakota. -- Photo taken by a fellow traveler, right after I took her picture hugging the same tree.
I see trees as living art. In summer, their green coolness is a Monet painting; in autumn their bright purple, red, orange and yellow leaves belong on a Gauguin canvas, and in winter, their stark dark and light pattern of limbs remind me of an Escher.
I even have several photos of me with my arms around a tree that I asked the occasional travel companion to snap. While I might be a bit ashamed to be a “Survivor” fan (yesterday’s blog), I take great pride in saying I’m a tree hugger.
Just one problem, Goose Island’s Big Tree is too big for me to hug properly.
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