Stumped

Where to go for our walk on Monday? I suggested a trail we hadn’t done for a while. I wanted to say hello to something there.

This walk is known, for obvious reasons, as the goblin trail. 

Take a pic of this and, because, miraculously, there is a signal on my phone, send it to my friend in Wales with a note saying you don’t only have to worry on Halloween. He responds immediately with: “What sort of neighbourhoods are you hanging out in?”

I should have waited until we got to the second sign.

This one with the fake bones.

What I’d told Joe I wanted to check out was “that stump”. But when we got there it was the wrong one.

I think it might have been the first one of these we’d noticed. By “these” I mean stumps that tried to “heal” their wounds. This is an interesting example, but not, I told Joe, the one I wanted.

He was pretty sure he remembered where the other one was, so yesterday we went looking. This involved another interesting sign.

When sent to Wales, I expected a query about whether I was actually on Summerisle (location of The Wicker Man), but all I got by way of response was a Ha, Ha tapback.

We found the stump. (So, good memory, Joe!)

I mean, look at this! How is it possible? How can the stump of a tree have enough “juice” left to do this?

Unlike previous times I’ve asked myself this question, yesterday I decided to do a bit of research. Turns out Doug firs are pretty bloody impressive. “When a tree is cut or broken off, adjacent trees treat the stump as if it was a part of themselves and will send help through their connected roots.” It is a process called capping.

And it really is quite mind boggling.