The Forest Stump Series

It was a cold, cloudy day at Pack Forest. There was a promise of rain in the forecast. Mason, Duane, and I were sitting around a fire in Pack Hall when Mason turned and said, "You know each plant out there has a story". I knew there must be thousands of plants and that meant there were thousands of stories, this is just one of them.

There it was standing just off the trail looking like a bowlegged cowboy. You can see by the picture that its roots are up off the ground and curved like they were wrapped around a hors for most of their life. I took a handfull of soil between the roots and looked at it closely. It was reddish brown and looked like the mulch in the flower beds around campus. We were hiking through the Trail of the Giants and I knew that the tree could be close to two hundred years old. That's a long time to ride a horse, and now it was like the horse had just disappeared. I went back to the dining hall and nursed a root beer while I thought about what had happened.

Here's the question:

What caused the roots to be bowlegged and so far off the ground?

If you need extra information I will answer any questions asked in the Yes/No format.

Send your questions or your final answer to: ttouse@u.washington.edu