Big Tree Falls

On a familiar trail, walking NE towards Tall Stump the trail looked very different. I did a double-take and realized the big pecan snag had fallen. This was one of the largest trees in the Woods. I first encountered it about seven years ago. I had used it for navigation many times walking in the near dark; it was a column that showed me the way. 117 cm in diameter but only twenty feet high, big bark slabs falling off the decaying wood. It did not lean. How did it fall spontaneously to the south? Metaphor for those around us.. folks who have helped guide and shape us. It must have been this past ten days. It has fallen on and crushed a younger hackberry and elm. Their cracked stems are still fairly fresh.

This Saturday morning early at 8 we had had a very light rain .01 inch, with more expected this afternoon. I went to the NE Gate and walked down along the Tree Loop to Elm Bridge and across to the west. One small white-tail ran from me near the junction with the Pipeline Trail and one large doe ran tentatively but then stopped and watched curiously as I walked by singing to the doe thirty feet away by the western camera tree.

The old deer carcass SW of the East Pond is mostly gone now.. the skull and intact vertebrae remain in the middle of a patch of fallen leaves darkened by decomposition. The smell of decay is gone too, from all but the immediate 1-2 m from the skull.

The Woods are lovely now. The big trees like the Grandfather cottonwood still have 95% + of their leaves, still vigorous green. Smaller diameter trees (green ash old saplings, elms etc.. have lost most of their leaves leaving the understory of the forest greatly thinned out. Beautiful day.