Old Maple in Fairfax Vermont This gnarly dying maple is at least 250 years old, and by its large, almost spherical crown, you can tell it was spared when the first settlers cut the forest down, and that with no other trees to compete with it grew round and huge and fat, standing sentinel over rows of crops, providing some toiling farmer with shade from the midday summer's sun, and bursting into yellow and red each fall. This picture is of the gap in the sky made when one large part of the tree crashed to the ground under its age; one afternoon it was in the air, the next morning it lay on the ground in a new patch of light. Rana Banerjee 2005

This gnarly dying maple is at least 250 years old, and by its large, almost spherical crown, you can tell it was spared when the first settlers cut the forest down, and that with no other trees to compete with it grew round and huge and fat, standing sentinel over rows of crops, providing some toiling farmer with shade from the midday summer's sun, and bursting into yellow and red each fall. This picture is of the gap in the sky made when one large part of the tree crashed to the ground under its age; one afternoon it was in the air, the next morning it lay on the ground in a new patch of light.
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