Riding up through the back country of southern Georgia today, my fascinations and daydreams seemed to surround the giant old oaks that stood in door yards and old abandoned homesteads along our way… It seems I have always been fascinated by these shade baring giants, the lives and times they must have silently witnessed… as we continued on our way it dawned on me Large Oaks have called out to my imaginings since my early childhood days playing in the school yard of McCord Elementary School…where a wonderful old tree perched on the edge of our world… sheltering us each day as we played around it’s enormous trunk and root system. Us, the small munchkins playing our games of pretend…looking for elusive fairies around it’s gnarly roots as they weaved their way in and out of the bank that headed down to the sidewalk by the passing street, playing house or school sitting in between those giant roots… Or using it’s ancient body as “base” for games of hide and seek, or to out run the “cooties” that some member of the opposite sex seemed to be continually contracting… A tree that we would hug our little bodies to it’s rough trunk in order to circle it’s huge circumference… just going from one side to the other like navigating half way around the world all along gingerly negotiating it’s unruly roots! (all this no easy task for it would have taken at least eight to ten of us to encompass it’s expansive girth)
Yes, I believe it was under those enormous ancient limbs that I first fell in love with…
Old Oak Trees…….
