The Senator...

A friend of mine forwarded THIS news story to me.  I was sad to read it.  I remember running along the wood plank walkway flanked with saw palmetto and cyprus trees draped with Spanish moss.  The sound of footfalls and childhood laughter mixed with frog songs and mockingbird calls made in triplicate. I remember the sounds of my sisters and my brother running ahead with me following after and our mother's cries of protest behind us all.  No matter how many times we saw it, our childish squeals died the moment we came upon The Senator.  It rose out of the woods like a skyscraper and made all of the other trees around it look like scraggly, knee-high children.  Our eyes widened.

We didn't have much money growing up and Big Tree Park was a nearby amusement that was free and impressive enough that we took every out-of-town relative, family friend, and house guest passing through to it.  We took pride in knowing the trail and pretending like it was "no big deal" to live so close to a giant.

The Senator was 3,500 years old before it burned.  When this tree was a sampling, pharaohs still ruled Ancient Egypt, the Babylonians were under Kassite rule, and the Minoan civilization faded into ash with the eruption of Thera.    The Assyrians waged war with the continent, Hittites hammered gold, and the Mycenaeans carved the Lion's Gate.  The Shang Dynasty held China and the Mayans controlled the pre-Columbian Americas.  I didn't think that within my lifetime, this tree rooted in history would fall.