Trying To Count A Village Creek Dead Tree's Rings While Walking With Indian Ghosts

I was in the mood to commune with nature and Native American ghosts today in the noon time frame.  My closest location for that type communing is to go walking in the Village Creek Natural Historical Area.

And so that is what I did, along with way more than the usual number of ghost walkers.

I think the cool temperature must appeal to some people who are usually averse to outdoor activity. Or maybe today's Village Creek crowd was just an odd fluke.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that whilst walking on the Village Creek NHA's paved trail I came upon a dead tree surrounded by what looked like crime scene tape. That dead tree was leaning, precariously, on a tree which was still among the living.

Today I was not too surprised to see that the corpse of the dead tree had been chainsawed into several big pieces.

When I saw the log on the ground, that you see above, I thought that this gave me an opportunity to solve a mystery that has been mystifying me ever since I learned the Village Creek location used to house one of America's biggest Indian villages, before Texans used a very primitive form of eminent domain abuse to force the Indians off their property.

The mystery that had long mystified me was wondering if the big trees I see in the Village Creek zone date back to the time when Indians still called this home.

I've counted rings on a stump, in my Pacific Northwest past, to determine how old a tree was. The Pacific Northwest tree ring counting took place on fir, pine and cedar trees. Not oak.

The ringage on the Village Creek dead oak tree was not clear enough to allow for counting the years it had been alive.

So, the age of the Village Creek trees remains a mystery.....