Trail Tree: A Pathmark Of First Peoples, Or What?
by John Laumer, Philadelphia 
on 04.13.07
This fascinating "trail tree" site contains photos of other trees similar to the malformed one pictured here. When I was a kid we called these things 'outhouse trees.' When I was older and sought less humorous explanations, I thought they might be the result of disease or grazing or of a wind felled tree leaning over a sapling. Now comes this report of an amazing group of people using GPS coordinates and digital camera uploads to network an investigation into whether such "Trail Trees" might be relics of Native American navigational systems. Via The Gainsville Georgia Times:- "Mountain Stewards, based in Pickens County, has embarked on a quest to map all of these "trail trees" in North America, and they're looking for volunteers to report sightings throughout Georgia. "This is a story that has been here for hundreds of years but has never been told," said Don Wells, president of Mountain Stewards...Wells began recording the GPS coordinates of the "trail trees" he encountered. Then he took a compass and began drawing lines between them on a map. "I found that in many cases they formed a route," he said. One such path follows along ridge lines, roughly paralleling the current Appalachian Trail...American Indians would take a sapling, usually a white oak, and cut off the primary stem just above one of the branches so that the branch would become the new trunk." A coring study is underway to age the trees. Maybe they are outhouse trees and the joke is on us. Or maybe not. Check it out some more at the Trail Tree Blog. The full project description is linked from the stewards site. Image credit:- the Hazelwood Trail Tree, in State of Georgia USA
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That tree is maybe, maybe 30 years old- so either those Indians have a time machine, or it's just a deformed tree. For those who still are not sure, please consult Occam's razor.
How deeply have they explored the forests to find such trees? Perhaps the reason the ones they have found roughly parallels the Appalachian trail is that people are usually near the trail, and just never find the trees deeper in. You would need to do a survey of a large swathe of land to determine how dense these trees are.
Mike wrote: "That tree is maybe, maybe 30 years old- so either those Indians have a time machine, or it's just a deformed tree. For those who still are not sure, please consult Occam's razor."
I ask then, with all due respect, how can anyone say that a Bonsai tree is hundreds of years old? They are grown, not from dwarf specimens, but from standard specimens under controlled circumstances. They are bent, bound, trimmed, and more to achieve their unique shape and small size. The small size is the result of stresses on the tree, and constant trimming by its owner.
An Indian --- after choosing the sappling --- placed a forked stick for a prop under one side, then used either another forked stick or a piece of sinew or vine to anchor the top of the tree at a right angle. This caused stress.
Next, the Indian clipped the original trunk of the tree (more stress) so that growth stopped there. This forced the branch near the end of the trunk to become the new trunk. More stress for the tree.
Being forced to grow lower to the ground deprived the tree of much of the sunlight that the other trees received, reducing it's efficiency at growth. More stress on the tree.
The Indians probably did not feel that the trees were to be kept indoors like a prisoner, so they were allowed to grow once they were shaped. They had a purpose, to mark a trail or something else. The shape enabled them to fulfil that purpose, so there was no need to further trim or distress the trees.
So, are Bonsai real? And so are the trail marker trees. The trees are much older than they appear. But, a coring project is now being conducted by Mountain Stewards to either prove or disprove the age of these trees by use of science. Visit their site, noted above, for more information about the project.