like baubles on a christmas tree!
Tag: trees
walking around ljubljana 10 years ago, looking for signs of spring.
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comfort maple
we always check atlas obscura when we’re somewhere new, just in case there’s something unexpectedly cool around the corner, you know? it was there that the boy found about this special tree, so we did a little detour on our way to the niagara falls to see it.
the comfort maple is supposedly the oldest sugar maple tree in canada. it’s so big, i had trouble making it fit on a photo! this is how far back i could go without trespassing a neighboring field.
the sap from sugar maple trees is used to make maple syrup, for which canada is famous. our friend lynda explained to us that the sap needs to be collected at just the right time, between late winter and early spring, when it’s still cold but not too cold and the tree is beginning to pull the sugar reserves stored in its trunk and roots. the water is later evaporated, to distill the goodness.
although it’s “just” 500 years old (and thus a baby compared to our local olive tree), it’s still a majestic tree and i hope someday we can see it in all its autumn glory!
when i started this walking on history series, i was inspired by all the sidewalk memorials we stumbled upon in berlin. but what about other kinds of history… like natural history?
there’s this olive tree a couple of towns over, in the middle of a touristic resort by the ria formosa. it’s huge and gnarly and falling apart a bit, the trunk wide and open enough to fit someone inside. and it’s also mind-blowing…
…because it’s one of the oldest trees in the world, with over 2200 years old. just let that sink in for a minute.
this tree was here before the visigoths invaded the peninsula from the north, before the moors took their place from the south, before the christians kicked them out. when portugal officially came to existence in the 12th century, this tree was already a thousand years old, bearing fruit and witness to it all. it “saw” the first sailors leaving towards the unknown a few centuries later, saw the empire rise and fall… and these days, it mostly sees tourists and hears their children’s laughter, splashing in the nearby pool.
it’s still here after all these years, like it’s always been, stretching our perspective of time and making us feel tiny in comparison. a few years ago, we planted a small olive tree on our backyard and now i wonder how long (hundreds of years? thousands?) it’ll live and what things it’ll see. i guess we’ll never know… and i’m ok with that. :)
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analogue wednesday #88
branches and trees, from our week in slovenia last year.