Visiting the Angel Oak was an impressively humbling experience. The Oak (Quercus Vrginiane) stands a towering 65 feet tall has a circumference of 25.5 feet and shades an area of 17,000 sq. ft. This 400 year old tree has impressive numbers, but it’s not until you stand underneath its canopy and navigate the twisted spiders of its limbs that you feel her weight and resilience. Admitting I had to stop and attempt to draw this angel before me, even at many hundreds of yards away the full extent fell off the paper, and at my vantage point I was also in perfect line to capture my fellow tree hugging friends circling the tree and playing under its branches.

Seeing this long-standing example of life sustaining against the odds has a certain breathtaking presence all of its own, but adding in that this particular region of South Carolina is prone to fire and hurricane commands respect of the oak’s winning within nature.