Who can resist a story about an Old Oak Tree? Not me, and Advisor Randy Dewing has a great one.

Randy grew up a farm boy in North-Central Pennsylvania. Woods-running has been part of his life for his whole life.

As Randy described it:

"This is the legendary Old Oak Tree of my childhood: in the woods above Grandpa's homestead. It is surrounded by other trees, now, but judging by the stone fences in the area and the wild apple trees that usually come from pasturing cows, I assume this was the yard tree for a long-gone farmhouse. The tree was enormous when it was standing." 

"My cousins and I used to see how many of us were needed to link hands all around the trunk. When we were youngins it took a bunch of us. (But the tree must have gotten smaller as we got older?)"

 "When the tree fell over a few years ago, my uncle Pete cut up most of it for firewood, but cut some windows (expanded the natural openings, really) in the hollow trunk and stuck a little roof on the top."

The Old Oak Tree has a new life now as the most--natural of ground blinds. Randy hunted deer and squirrels from within his old tree in the Fall of 2017. Hanging inside the tree is Randy's All-Around Jacket. From the outside, the Old Oak Tree looks exactly like what it is ... a Very Old and Wonderful Oak.

The Old Oak Tree helped Randy put some great Wild Food on the table ... or in this case, as a kindness to me, he placed the skillet on top of his WeatherWool Jacket. Along with the Whitetail, the skillet holds Wild Morels and Wild Rice, collected by canoe and parched over an open fire. WOW ... That's great stuff.  Wild Foods is what got us into WeatherWool, so we love this kind of thing!

Thanks for this great family story, Randy!  And here's hoping your family continues to honor and enjoy Grandpa's Old Oak for generations to come!!

 24 October 2017