The Big Tree

Posted by Andrew Evans of National Geographic Traveler on November 27, 2013

The Big Tree in Tsitsikamma on South Africa's Garden Route (Photo by Andrew Evans,
National Geographic)
With every new mile, South Africa continues to surprise me.
One minute I am watching a thousand black-feathered ostriches kicking up the pink dust of the
dry Karoo. The next, I see the ocean, wild and white, thrashing the immense sand dunes along
the coast, and then, just as the road sign welcomes me to the Eastern CapeI see trees. A
million green trees, and a forest like I have never seen before.
This is not the oaky English woodlands, or Americas eastern forests, or the dripping wet
Amazonian jungle. This is an African forest, temperate, alive, fecund and green, with vines and
plants and tall tree trunks that reach skyward with shouting branches.
Somehow, talk of The Garden Route instilled my imagination with pictures of radishes in a
row, or pregnant watermelons on twisted vines and cheery farmers markets with wooden pails
of heirloom onions.Wrong gardenI mean, you can find the farmers markets and vegetable
patches, but the garden of the Garden Route is a garden of the EarthSouth Africas forested
Garden of Eden, intense with yellowwood trees.
Real yellowwood (Podocarpus latifolius) is distinctly South African, and should you ever admire
some antique piece of African furniture, its likely that the golden-hued craftsmanship was built
from a yellowwood.
But to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, We kill what we love most, and the aggressive cutting of
South Africas yellowwood led to its near eradication. Today, however, the tree has been
declared South Africas national tree and is protected. It is illegal to injure a yellowwood tree in
any waythey are very slow-growing, but left to live their natural fullness, yellowwoods can
flourish to amazing heights.
The Big Tree of Tsitsikamma National Park stands 120 feet (36.6 m) high, with a 30 feet (9 m)
circumference around the base of the trunk. Craning my neck from the path below, its hard to
fathom the upper reaches of the high branches. The dappled green and yellow forest light is
disorienting, but like anything huge, the Big Tree makes me feel very smalllike a tiny field
mouse standing next to a Greek column.
Nobody knows the trees exact age. Some estimate only 600 years old, others more than a
thousand. Standing next so close to the aged bark, velvety with green moss, I reached out and
touched the big treeand I felt like I was touching time. Centuries of silent life in the midst of a
forest at the very bottom of Africa.
Like a standing timeline, I imagined back through the centuriespast the first Dutch settlers and
the English ships offshore, past the Xhosa settlements, and beyond to the Khoi San and the
earliest humans who walked under this same cooling shade. Time machines are fiction, but trees
are real, and for me, touching the Big Tree was magical, offering a transcendent vision beyond
the political boundaries of todays Republic of South Africa. Instead, I saw the eternal story of
this place in the worldtrees that grow nowhere else, a forest where secret elephants once
walked, and the unwritten log of human visitors this tree has watched, over the centuries.
And I am amazed at how, in the strange math of the universe, this one tree kept growing against
all odds (and lumberjacks), so that it became bigbig enough to warrant its own sign on the
N2 and its own parking lot and restrooms and boardwalk and hiking trail and brochures. That is
the real miracle of the big treeand that is why, when you are driving through the greenest
corner of South Africa, surprised by this unexpected forest, you must stopyou must park and
hike and pay homage to the big tree, and stare back into the true age and spirit of this country.

Standing over 120 feet high, the Big Tree of Tsitsikamma is one of the largest remaining
yellowwood trees in the great forests near Knysna, South Africa (Photo by Andrew Evans,
National Geographic)
Cite: http://digitalnomad.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/27/the-big-tree/












Tree of Ages
By: Jessica Skye
Oh mighty tree watched over Mother Natures children eternally.
Alive and well to cherish life for life has cherished it.
Earths creatures die leaving youngsters behind.
Replicated again, again, and again this cycle never ends.
Ignorant and blind humans do not notice Mother Earths beauty.
Suns golden hue and vigorous green are guarded well against deaf humans ill will,
Cant thee stop the screams of death?
Alas history repeats itself except a god-like spirit who watched over Mother Natures children.
Our sage-like tree whose wisdom affects those with times open eyes.