1066. "Alive, Alive - O Tree"Continues into the 20's...
Exeter, RI

The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has given us a chance to check on some of the many old boxes we planted in RI years ago, but haven't bothered to check in more recent times. Let's face it, with over 1000 plants now around the world and far too many other things to do, checking old boxes has not really been a high priority for us!;-) Besides, sometimes it seems that trails, trees and sometimes even rocks have changed so much over time that we can't even find our own old boxes! Once in a while, though, we might get lucky, and find an old box of ours buried beneath a tree that fell over on it long ago or something like that, so we might decide to relocate it to a nearby spot. Or we might decide to "demystify"some of our old clues for "mystery"boxes of ours that have never been found or that haven't been found for a very long time. These, then, are some of the boxes that we have decided to label with "Continues into the 20's ..." and this one continues with almost the same clue as originally written, too - just with the box moved a bit because of that fallen tree!;-)

While walking around Breakheart Pond for Valentine's Day 2007, we were struck by the image of a huge stump, about 10 feet tall, topped by an almost perfect circle of wood which, although it appeared to be dead, had live branches coming out of its top. We vowed to return to plant a box to commemorate this "alive alive-o tree" arising out of the dead wood.

Unfortunately, the "O"tree got knocked over in a terrific storm not long afterwards, rendering our former clues completely worthless. However, we were able to salvage the box, so, to find a hint of what this tree used to look like as shown on our stamp, just go to the first water crossing spot on the Breakheart Trail north of the fish ladder dam. Just past the long chunk of cut rock there near the water on the left, look off trail left for a large mossy stump with a skinny tree growing out of the middle of it. Not at all like that marvelous "O"tree that could once be seen growing in this area, but we left our stamp memory of that original one under duff behind the "U"between this currently sprouting stump and the standing tree next to it!

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