I nearly plunged into the stump of a battlefield 'witness tree'!

It took quite the effort for me to get this far. (Image courtesy Jonathan Perryman)

                Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter | My YouTube videos

On Sunday afternoon, my friend Tony Patton — our excellent Resaca (Ga.) battlefield guide — made the grave error of pointing out to us the gigantic, lonely stump of a “witness tree” in a field where United States troops advanced during the mid-May 1864 fighting. So naturally, “The Irishman” and I had to see up close this marvel of nature. (Cóilín Ó Coigligh, who’s on a three-week tour of Western Theater sites, gets giddy around “witness trees,” too.)

A look into the black heart of the
Resaca (Ga.) battlefield "witness tree."
(Image courtesy Tony Patton)

According to Patton, a storm took down part of the gigantic red oak. “Then we could see that the inside was pretty rotten and dying off,” he told me. “Was just a matter of time before the whole thing went down.”

While my fellow battlefield trampers watched, I inelegantly made my way to the top of the four-foot high stump for a brief view of its rotten core. As this was St. Patrick’s Day, I had beginner’s luck, coming close but not plunging into the belly of the massive beast. If I had, I'm pretty sure there’d be no getting out and I would have missed the grilled lemon pepper trout dinner at my favorite Cracker Barrel in Chattanooga.

When I showed the photo at top to the disgusted Mrs. B at breakfast on Monday, she only mumbled a few words: “That’s your best side.”

Irishman Cóilín Ó Coigligh and I have a fondness for "witness trees."