Full disclosure: this tree is not on my property at Roundrock. It is just across the line on the land of my neighbor to the south. I came upon it when I was planting all of those fence posts to mark the southern line. The stream you see at the bottom is the one that starts at the southwest corner of our property and meanders down the Central Valley to feed into the lake and beyond. (Sorry about the poor quality of the photo, but it's really hard to get an image in the forest when there is so much dappled sunlight. By the way, if you're ever in a trivia contest and need to know the name of Sancho Panza's donkey, it was Dapple.) I read a book about a man with some forested property in rural Missouri. He rambled about it, giving an account of what he saw along the way. One of the interesting stops he made was at the "gravity defying tree" he had growing beside a creek in his woods. Like the tree above, this one had fallen -- because the stream had undermined it -- and then turned its trunk upward. In his case, the trunk was not resting on the creek bed but grew out over it then turned skyward. It was unlike the other trees in his forest enuf that it drew his particular attention. But when you think about it, all trees are "gravity defying." All trees spend their entire lives resisting the pull of gravity to send their branches ever higher into the sky in the grab for sunlight. In fact, when I see an old tree with a long, straight trunk, I try to imagine the immense weight that is focused in that trunk, pushing down on the ground that is holding it, forever in tension between resisting gravity and succumbing to it. Missouri calendar:

• The Missouri Natural Events Calendar is blank for today.

Today in Missouri history:

• The first bridge across the Missouri River opened on this date in 1869. The engineer, Octave Chanute, was later an important advisor to the Wright brothers who made an engineering achievement of their own.
• The Missouri River rearranged itself near Camden, Missouri on this date in 1915, eliminating a 10-mile horseshoe bend, ironically along a line of small towns from Napoleon to Waterloo to Wellington.
• Gospel and R and B artist Fontella Bass is born on this date in St. Louis in 1940.
• The honeybee is designated as Missouri’s state insect in 1985.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 1:01 am and is filed under Green Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.