The Excitement of Discovering an Endangered Species

…right there in the yard for all to see!

I visited the daughter of a dear friend of mine last summer. It was her 12th birthday party, which I wouldn’t have missed for the world – I’ve known and loved this young lady since before she was born. The party was held on a stretch of flat lawn below the house, which is a ~70-year old timber frame atop a tall knob in Asheville, North Carolina.

There’s a path with timber-crossed bark-backfilled steps winding down the hillside from the house to the lawn. At one point along the path there’s a little grove of tall hemlocks, blue spruce and Frasier firs with a rhododendron mid-story boundary that’s cool even in the heat of summer. An old rope swing that doesn’t look strong enough to hold anyone anymore dangles from a lone oak’s limb, a little shady clearing off the main path. There, blending unobtrusively amongst the firs and hemlocks was a different kind of tree – different enough to catch my attention sharply that day. So I collected a needled twig hoping to identify it when I got home.

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