Since late December of 2007, I've stopped and photographed an old white oak just outside of Earlysville, Virginia whenever I could. It was often when I was leaving town after visiting my Mother who was battling lung cancer - and now it is during visits to see my Father, who has since been diagnosed with vascular dementia. It has become nothing less than a ritual - one of those comforting things that you do amidst less than comforting times. But tonight as I write this, I realize that I've also been steadily documenting this tree that has lived more years than either you or I might imagine to live. I've come across the term witness trees before, and while I have no idea whether civil war-era bullets will ever be found in this white oak, I can imagine that it was a worthy place to stop - for a lengthy conversation, a meal, or a night's rest for Civil War troops who found themselves traveling through this part of Virginia. If only trees could talk...
So between Christmas and New Years, I received an email by someone (1mandomaker) who had crafted a video for the song "Sticks That Made Thunder" by the Nashville-based group The Steeldrivers. The song is written by Mike Henderson and Chris Stapleton - and is about American Civil War events as told from a tree's perspective. The image chosen for the video - for the tree - is one that I first posted on 27 December 2007. The video now has just under 83,000 hits - and it makes me smile that this beautiful white oak, considered the second oldest in Virginia, sitting alongside a Charlottesville-Albemarle airport runway (the airport is now caring for it), has been viewed so many times. It's one of the trees included in the book Remarkable Trees of Virginia. It's a deserving tree.
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