Once I knew what to look for, I started seeing them - not everywhere, but more often than I expected. We have none on our property, but we do have sourwoods masquerading as pointers!
Nicely written and useful information. I'll be more attentive to these trees on our hikes in the future. The video by the Mountain Keepers is really fascinating. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! I was really fascinated by looking at my Garmin map of our hike yesterday and seeing that the tree pointed exactly where the waterfall ended up being.
I have never heard of these marker trees before, maybe they're an East Coast thing? American settler landscape folklore is a difficult thing to navigate, because Indigenous peoples of this continent were and are mythologized in the settler-colonial psyche. If you ever wonder about "Lover's Leaps" ask me about them...I wrote a whole dissertation on the topic...
Very cool! You might research that trail to see if anyone has written about that particular tree. You can also check out the Mountain Stewards link above to see if they've checked it out. Since I wrote this article I came across one huge tree in a Marker shape that I think could possibly be genuine. Not only was it enormous, but it somehow stood out from the trees around it. It just had a strong sense of being unique. When I walked about half a mile on, I realized I was at the Track Rock Petroglyph site and the tree had been pointing that way.
I'm going to look out for these on our property!
Once I knew what to look for, I started seeing them - not everywhere, but more often than I expected. We have none on our property, but we do have sourwoods masquerading as pointers!
Nicely written and useful information. I'll be more attentive to these trees on our hikes in the future. The video by the Mountain Keepers is really fascinating. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! I was really fascinated by looking at my Garmin map of our hike yesterday and seeing that the tree pointed exactly where the waterfall ended up being.
I have never heard of these marker trees before, maybe they're an East Coast thing? American settler landscape folklore is a difficult thing to navigate, because Indigenous peoples of this continent were and are mythologized in the settler-colonial psyche. If you ever wonder about "Lover's Leaps" ask me about them...I wrote a whole dissertation on the topic...
Very cool! You might research that trail to see if anyone has written about that particular tree. You can also check out the Mountain Stewards link above to see if they've checked it out. Since I wrote this article I came across one huge tree in a Marker shape that I think could possibly be genuine. Not only was it enormous, but it somehow stood out from the trees around it. It just had a strong sense of being unique. When I walked about half a mile on, I realized I was at the Track Rock Petroglyph site and the tree had been pointing that way.