Tag Archives: trees

07/25/12 ~ Susan

Ode to Angel Oak

Indelible Imprint, Limited Edition

The featured Limited Edition photograph, “Indelible Imprint“, and the haiku that follows express my fascination with a well-known magnificent Southern Live Oak tree—the Angel Oak located on Johns Island, South Carolina. A previous release of a similar photograph taken on the same day, “Mighty Angel Oak“, was very popular with customers.

Southern Live Oaks are amazing trees with curving branches that reach out in every direction and then arch up again toward the sky, and the Angel Oak is the granddaddy of them all.  Measuring 65 feet tall with limbs stretching out to 180 feet at their widest point, tip-to-tip (according to Wikipedia), the Angel Oak is the oldest living Live Oak tree in the Southeast and has quite a following. Each time I visit the tree, I witness the awe and admiration surrounding it. Visitors from all over the world are snapping pictures and can often be seen hugging the tree, hoping to absorb some of its strong life force. The haiku that follows is an ode to the beloved Angel Oak.

Curving ancient limbs
adorned in mossy splendor ~
angel of an oak.

 

10/10/11 ~ Susan

The Boneyard

Botany Bay Boneyard

The Boneyard

The Boneyard seems like a befitting theme as Halloween approaches, yet the boneyard captured in this picture doesn’t quite match the one that comes to mind—the image of a graveyard, scattered with headstones tended by splintered black trees, stabbing their craggy limbs into the steel gray sky. This graveyard belongs to Mother Nature, a graveyard of trees slowly being reclaimed by the sea, trees that are now just remnants of what they once were. This place possesses a haunting beauty, a dichotomy of life and death that transcends elements of nature into the supernatural.

Despite the outward forces of destruction, life is teeming in and around the boneyard at Botany Bay Plantation: surf continues to batter the shoreline, pelicans fly in symmetrical formations overhead, and the sun shines so bright you can scarcely steal a glance at the Carolina blue sky. The sculptural tree relics of the boneyard contrast starkly against the life-giving blues of the sky and still, this place of turbulence is much more than a ghostly apparition. A diverse wildlife population flourishes nearby, including endangered species such as Loggerhead Sea Turtles, Wilson’s Plovers, and Least Terns. After spotting one of the rare Painted Buntings that inhabit this coastal area, I am reminded once again that life goes on.