Fairchild Oak
Located at Latitude 29.38829, Longitude -81.13088 about 8 miles NNW of Ormond Beach Florida in the Bulow Creek State Park
Truth behind the tree
Norman Harwood was a big man, heavyset and so tall he had to stoop to walk through most doorways.
His neighbors never took to him. Rumors of unpaid debts, jail time and cattle thieving swirled about him. His death inspired tales of poison and a haunting.
Though he lived in the Halifax area just five years, he left a legacy: a two-story, board-and-batten house and an even bigger tree that bore his name for decades. The house stood more than a hundred years before it was torn down. The tree still stands.
In the end, though, he would lose that, too.
A tree by any name
The tree stands alone at the edge of a large clearing. You could find a live oak taller than its 68 feet, but a trunk about 24 feet around and a crown of branches stretching out more than twice its height imbues it with a certain presence.
This is a tree worthy of a name
In the shade of the tree, a bronze plaque set within a large coquina block dedicates it to the memory of the renowned botanist David Fairchild, who helped bring the flowering cherry trees to Washington, D.C.
How the tree got Fairchild's name is a story as tangled as its gnarled branches, interweaving the lives of Harwood, Fairchild and a local woman with a drive to preserve natural treasures.
Separating fact from myth where the Fairchild Oak is concerned has never been easy, though.
A touch of myth can even be found in the plaque, which proclaims that the tree "gladdened man's heart for 2,000 years," though arborists working for the state have estimated the age of the tree to be between 300 and 2,500 years old. The tree has never been core dated for fear of damaging the spectacular specimen.
That makes the oak a relative newcomer; archaeologists have found Native American artifacts on the site dating back to approximately 2,000 B.C.
Relatively high and dry, with rich soil and two small springs nearby that flow year-round, the land was a natural choice for early settlers, including James Ormond, who came around 1800 and built a house just a stone's throw from the tree. The family abandoned the site in 1829 after the death of James Ormond II, whose tomb can be found at Ormond Tomb Park.
When Norman Harwood bought the land in 1880, he built his home near the shade of the great oak.
parts of this brief history paraphrased from Derek Catron, link above
We took a little ride on the Old Dixie Highway, through rural Volusia and Flagler counties and up to Flagler Beach. There are a few stretches that are still unspoiled, very few. Bulow Creek State Park and the other preserved areas just north of Ormond Beach offer some glimpse of what Florida was like when I was a child. The rest of it is strip malls, housing developments, highways, big box stores, litter, trash, trailer parks and all other manner of humanity run amok.
A nearby very large live oak
maybe 1,000 years old?
Today the tree and this part of the park look pretty sad. The tree was quite beat up from Hurricane Matthew in October of 2016 and none of the debris from that storm has been moved from around the tree. As with most of Florida, the park is also moderately trashed. We spend more time in Florida State Parks picking up litter than we do observing the wildlife and natural features.
This section of Old Dixie between Bulow Creek and Highbridge is my favorite. It can be a little confusing in this area. Old Dixie runs north-south. If you want to get to the beach you need to head east on Walter Boardman Lane and then take a hard right onto High Bridge Road (above). These Canary Island Date Palms were likely planted in the 1910s along what remains of Highbridge Road. To the left is the vast salt marsh that feeds from Matanzas Inlet to the north and Ponce Inlet to the south.
Looking east down Highbridge Road and another stand of very old Canary Island Date Palms (Phoenix canariens), likely planted in the 1910s by early European settlers.
Highbridge Road dead ends into the SR A-1-A at the Atlantic Ocean. A short drive north will lead to an area that has been preserved called Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area and Preserve. This is a great place to check out the beaches in this little unspoiled piece of northeast Florida
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The weather this winter is very variable. It can go from chilly to blazing hot in no time. At the end of the highway we checked out the orange sand beaches of the Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area and Preserve. It was like a blast furnace stepping onto the orange sand. . . later it was chilly and windy and the sand blasted me into putting on jeans and a hoodie
Crazy "winter" weather in Florida
THE BIRDS
I never tire of talking (and photographing) the flocks of seabirds that always swarm me. It could be that they know of my almost-fame for being an animal whisperer, or it could be the almonds I always carry in my pockets to keep me powered through my daily treks. All birds love almonds.
Seagull from Afar
by Dejan Stojanovic
Lie on the ground and listen to the grass,
Hear the silent signals from outer space,
Dream by making and make by dreaming,
Feel what the trees bathed in sunlight feel,
Gaze far to see the sea-gull emerging from the sea,
Imagine that today is the birth of the world and greet it,
Greet the old bird.
A seagull passes alone, wings spread, silent over roofs
from Hospital Window
by Allen Ginsberg
We've Read:
His Secret to Never Growing Old
John Wick: Chapter 2
Somehow after a lifetime of playing iconic badasses-heroic cops, a hacker named Neo, a certain FBI agent-Keanu Reeves,
remains one of the most enigmatic figures in Hollywood. But here the always-guarded actor opens up - about his life, his past hits, his latests project (John Wick: Chapter 2), and his eternally youthful physique-while making one thing very clear: He's still ready to kick lots of ass.
Reeves’ youthful enthusiasm is a little surprising, and not because the guy is officially 52 years old. (In his mod black jacket emblazoned with “Arch”—the motorcycle company he co-founded—he doesn’t look anywhere near that age.) And it isn’t because I expected Reeves to be a jerk, either. The truth is, I had no idea what to expect, because Keanu Reeves—a star for more than a quarter century, a guy whose films have amassed nearly $2 billion at the box office—has achieved something miraculous in today’s celebrity-obsessed world: He’s preserved some mystery about himself.
Whoa Is Me
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