103 Years

103 Rings

Beetle tracks in the bark.

Some of you might have heard that we had a bit of a drought this summer in Texas. It was more than a bit of a drought actually, it was quite a serious drought. A lot of cattle were sold off because there was simply no food. No grass was growing and there was no hay to be bought. Wildlife suffered a similar fate with regards to food, and a worse one in regards to water as pretty much all of the natural surface water dried up in many area. What got hit the hardest were the trees. I read some estimates that Texas lost 10% of its standing timber. All of those dead trees led to some pretty horrific fires earlier in the year and I can imagine that the dead trees that are still standing are going to contribute to a lot of downed power lines over the next few years as they succumb to rot and gravity.

Portable TV?

Where I take my son to preschool and walk around they have been doing quite a good job identifying and removing the dead standing trees. Many of these trees line the public walking paths directly adjacent to some really nice homes and back yards and if they just let nature take it's course there would be too many smushed fences and cars and houses. There's scarcely a house in the whole town that isn't in the fall line for at least one tree. Lots of trees down, lots of work for tree cutters, lots of stumps. The stumps show the growth rings from the trees that recently stood there and the tree rings are interesting. In them you can see a pattern of good and bad years for growing. You can see scars from injuries that occurred and then grew over. You can see some clear evidence of droughts. Counting them is fun. Most of the really big trees are 80-90 years old. This coincides with the last big lumber boom in the area. The oldest tree I found was 103 years old. It was big, it got thirsty, now it's gone. 

Skittish Coots.

I get really wrapped up in wandering around in the woods counting tree rings and taking pictures. I look at interesting trees and old junk I find in the woods and try to sneak up on ducks. I just wander around. It's a lot like being 10 and not having a care in the world as long as you get home by the time you're supposed to get home. I get to worrying though. Worrying that perhaps this whole stay at home dad thing is making me lose touch with the real world. My wife is off making a living and discussing the football game with co-workers and dealing with grumpy business partners and I'm discovering interesting beetle tracks on tree bark. She swears it's ok though, that in fact my continued trivial observations and ramblings about the world remind her that there is a real world right outside of hers that isn't all seriousness and business. Instead of resenting my goofy little explorations she's interested in them. She listens to my duck chasing exploits with the same rapture that I listen to her problems of a stuck well. Between the two of us we capture more of the seriousness and the simple joy of life than any one person could experience alone. Things are working well.