The Wonderful Lives Of The Live Oak Tree

My little farm is strewn with massive hundred year-old live oak trees dripping with masses of Spanish moss

. The girth of some of these trees is 30 to 40 feet and their branches reach almost 100 feet into the sky.

They are the dominant presence on the landscape and their dark green "crowns" of thickly leaved branches often brush the ground. Standing beneath one of the live oaks, you get the impression you are in a large dimly lit room. The effect is cavernous and spectral. The rain can be coming down in sheets from the sky, and yet barely a sprinkle will penetrate the dense canopy of one of my live oaks.

The are the haven and sustenance of a myriad of life forms. Nations of squirrels live in them and make their living off of them. Birds galore roost in them and make their nests among their branches. Woodpeckers probably spend their whole lives on or in one of these mammoths, pecking and circling up and down their trunks and branches for insects and larvae. Raccoons use them too for lodging and as a means of escape from my dogs. My dogs escape the heat and rainy weather under their canopies. And my horses do the same thing.

But for the horses, this is not always a good choice. Lightning strikes these trees often and travels down the trunk and through their enormous roots deep into the ground. I lost a big beautiful white quarter horse, whom I very much loved, during a summer thunderstorm because lightning shot up through the roots and electrocuted him while he was standing under an oak tree. I was standing not 50 feet away when it happened. A white flash, a terrible crack and he was gone instantly. He is buried next to that tree today.

One of the live oaks is perilously close to my front door. It has been creeping up on me year by year and now its branches brush the roof at the front of my house. It has limbs as thick as an oil drum and I can only imagine what they might weigh. In a strong storm one could come crashing through my living room roof. I know I've got to do something about it soon. But to me these trees, with all the lives depending on them, and the lives they sometimes claim, are more than ornamental plants or shade trees. Within their branches and under their canopies the Story of Life unfolds and the daily chronicle is mesmerizing and maybe even sacred to behold.

by: Al Haneson

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