The "The President Is Almost Older Than Dirt" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading the free publication "The Fishwrapper" which is published every couple of weeks and found in restaurants and local supermarkets in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  It is published by Little Mountain Printing and features a few true stories as well as a few fiction, some with a religious tilt to them.  It usually is about 20 pages with a few advertisements in both color and black and white, but most of the rest of the publication is black and white.  I love to pick up a copy every other week when we shop at a local supermarket and check out the variety of stories.  

"The President"

One that caught my eye in the December 10 edition was titled "3200 Years In One Photograph."  Story about a giant sequoia tree that is growing in Nevada's Sequoia National Park that is called "The President."  The tree is allegedly 3,200 years old, has 2 billion leaves and stands 247 feet tall.  Now, that folks is a big tree!  You would have to get pretty far away from it and use a wide angle camera lens, holding it vertically to take the photograph of the tree.  But, the photograph in The Fishwrapper was created by "National Geographic" photographers taking 126 photographs at different levels of the tree and morphing them together into one great photograph.  The photographers had to climb the tree with pulleys and levers to take thousands of photographs.  When you look at the black and white photo in he publication, you will notice a large black dot in the foreground that happens to be an image of a man.  Tough to image just how large this beautiful tree might be.  

The red dot in the first photograph is actually this man
seen here next to the trunk of the tree.

But, it is only the second tallest giant sequoia tree in the world as measur- ed by the volume of its trunk and third largest in trunk circum- ference.  "The President" contains about 54,000 cubic feet of wood and bark.  It is considered a snow tree, since it has adapted for long winters in the Sierra Nevada.  But, it's also a fire tree with thick bark that protects it from burning in lightning-caused fires.  Tough to believe that this tree was growing in the Sequoia National Park during the height of ancient Greece's civilization and 1200 years old when Jesus lived while Rome was well into its rule of most of the western world and points beyond.  Now, that's unbelievable!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.