A True Missouri Champion

Missouri Champion and co-National Champion Burr Oak

 

German composer Johann Pachelbel was  born in Nuremberg in late August, 1653.  He only wrote one canon, but it was a pretty darn good one - Pachelbel's Canon in D.   It is so beautiful I find listening to it to be a great stress reliever.  If the name doesn't ring a bell for you, you can refresh your memory by taking a few minutes to listen to it at this link:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY4DCQdWGTQ&feature=related

 

Around the same time Johann was born, a Burr Oak sapling sprouted in a flood plain just south of what is now McBaine, Mo.  Johann died March 9, 1706.  His music still thrills people today.  That oak sapling still survives, though it is currently undergoing a serious challenge to its survival  due to the drought.  Farmer John Sam Williamson, the fifth generation of his family to farm the field where the National Champion bur oak is located, has hauled 1700 gallons of water to the tree to help nurse it through the current drought.  Mr. Williamson says he intends to haul 850 gallons of water a week to the tree until the drought ends.  The weather forecast for the end of this week is promising.  Maybe Hurricane Isaac will go easy on the big easy, New Orleans, and save some rain for the parched fields and forests of Missouri.

 

The tree, which was already 150 years old when Lewis and Clark passed nearby on their 1804 expedition, has survived droughts before.  Also floods.  The tree was in 9 foot of water for 6 weeks during the 1993 flood.  Perhaps the biggest threat it faces is not drought, floods, or lightning, but bona fide idiots.  People have fired bullets into the tree trunk, spray-painted graffiti on it, and, in March of 2011, carved the words "LIVE LIFE" into its trunk. 

 

Naturalist John Muir was a tree lover.  In fact, a National Park - Muir Woods - is named after him.  According to the National Park Service, when John Muir learned that William and Elizabeth Kent were naming a redwood forest near San Francisco in his honor, he declared, "This is the best tree-lovers monument that could possibly be found in all the forests of the world."

 

Here is what Mr. Muir had to say about threats to trees of the human variety:  "God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods.  But He cannot save them from fools."

Mark Twain had a slightly different view.  "The trouble ain't" he said, "that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."