Shimmer (Tortured Survivor)

This work began on a bright late spring day when the light sparkled with fresh rain and the tree was deep dark wet. My red truck is in the background, far right. I have been chronicling this amazing tree for several years now. It is 6’ across at 3’ above ground yet only 11’’ thick. The tree is a sugar maple that, as near as the farmer and I have been able to ascertain, is roughly 300 years old. The farmer/property owner, in his mid 80’s, told me that his family bought this piece of ground when he was a young boy. He related this story; “The old guy who sold the property was retiring to move to town. He told my dad that the tree was in front of their homestead cabin, and it was big back then. The tree got just about cut in half by lightning during a big storm while he was just a boy.” (That would have been sometime before the Civil War.) The tree is on top of a high rolling ridge that has caught many a summer storm, tornadoes, ice storms, and heavy wet snows which are a regular occurrence in winter. Cattle use it as a scratching post, lay under it for shade, and the local dominate buck scars it up every fall. Tortured and twisted by time, weather and animals… it survives.