The Big Tree

Tom and I left early and drove over across the state to hunt for the Big Tree, the Monster Maple. It was wet that day. Phil, the logger, met us in the driveway. He indicated that the fabled tree lay Northwest. " Follow the brook up to the top and the tree lays just below the steep at the top of the hill. You'll run across a pipe comin' out of the ground in the woods and water's comin' up out of it like a fountain and feedin' this brook. The tree's right around there"

Off we set through the soggy meadow up to the top and struck out through the woods upward, ever upward. We never did find a fountainous pipe, that still remains for later explorations. We did find several nice maples, including this one:

But nothing big enough to be the Monster Maple of legend. Up we climbed, over the top of "the steep" and to the very crest of the hill, hoping to be able to spot the Big Tree from above. Alas, in the woods no matter how high you are it all just looks like forest. We crisscrossed and zigzagged getting wetter and wetter. I followed the brook to it's source, hoping to run across the mysterious fountain pipe. We must have gotten onto another brook somehow because the one we were following ended in a shallow brown pool on the top of the hill. Meanwhile Tom struck out east thinking that we must have cut over too far. Finally we met up somewhere out there and went back west again and then... there it was.   The Big Tree.

Here's Tom with the tree for scale. We measured it. It is 17.5 feet in circumference. You can figure out the actual diameter by some complicated formula, multiply by Pi and divide by something else or maybe that's height but anyway it's the biggest maple I've ever seen.