Photos © Loree Griffin Burns

I’m still in the process of moving content from my old blog to this new one. I’m not entirely sure how much of it to move, actually, so progress has been slow. Should I simply start blogging anew here? And leave the old stuff over there? Dunno. But today it occurred to me that I could do a combination: Blog anew when the mood strikes, but re-run older posts now and again, when something that resonates comes to mind.

Today, for example, I’m working on a presentation that I’ll give at the Beetle Busters book launch next week, and so my mind is on trees. More specifically, trees I have loved. And, so, I thought of this post from October 2011, when I wrote a bit about my favorite shagbark hickory on the planet:

We’re moving. If you have ever moved, you can probably relate to how I’m feeling these days: harried, overwhelmed, excited, and sad. The sad part has to do with saying goodbye to a place that has been Home to my family for a decade. For ten years, we’ve worked the soil here, and trampled the grass and climbed the trees and lived with the wildlife. We know this place in a way that no one else does, and it is very hard to let that go. Those trees up there, for example, are two of a dozen or so shagbark hickories that we have come to know. The new owners will surely love them as much, but when they wonder why the one on the right has no shag at the bottom, who will tell them?  Who will describe the little boys who grew up playing under that tree? Little boys who one day ran their chubby hands over those tags and strips of glorious hanging bark and couldn’t help but pull. And pull. And pull.  I’m sad that this story will come away with us, and that the lovely, generous, naked-at-the-bottom-shaggy-at-the-top hickory will not.