The Hatfield Sycamore Tree

This Majestic Sycamore Tree

lived in Hatfiled, Massachusetts

for nearly 300 years.

He was a big boy
with a base circumference of 28.5' in 2006
But one day last summer a huge limb

came crashing down.

This brocken limb, nicknamed "the widow maker",

was not a good sign of things to come for this beloved tree.

The dreaded pink slip was handed down.
And though the town's people were sad
to learn about the sick old sycamore's fate, they knew it was for the best.

And so the process of deconstructing
nearly 300 years of living began.

The extent of its rot was alarming.

To see how time can wear down something so solid,
turning it into a hollow shell, was not so much poetic, but more of a reminder.

It seemed like everyone in town came
to take a piece of this history away with them.
Piece by piece it was carted off.
The stump was ground back into the earth,
but its roots still remain.