As I drive home from work each day I come to the corner of Pine and Howertown. I can't help but look at the huge chunks of tree in the yard on the corner. The big old tree that stood there was cut down, I know not the reason why, but it amazes me when I see the cross sections of that tree. The rings of a tree tell its history. Dendrochronology (wow, try using that in a sentence today) is the scientific method of dating a tree, mainly counting the rings. Every night when I pass by I think, wow that would make a great table. I get visions of carrying a hunk home and shellacing it, but alas, I think that would be an impossible task.
Catasauqua was settled in 1805 and chartered as a Borough in 1853, was the tree there then? Did George Taylor pass by that tree ever. He built his house in 1768.
I find trees amazing - did you know that there is a a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine still growing in a "secret location" somewhere in the White Mountains of California which is almost 4,800 years old. That means that tree was a sapling somewhere around 2789 BC or BCE which I just recently learned is more politically correct.
As I walked up to where the tree once stood, I was in awe, the beauty of the wood even more awesome close up. "I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree" was written by Alfred Joyce Kilmer about living trees. But a tree's beauty is more than trunk deep, its beauty extends all the way into the core itself. As I touched the wood I could not help but think how God is such an artist to make something so beautiful on the outside and on the inside.
That's just another day in Catasauqua.
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