Spooky Trees of Nazareth: The Horror!

October has arrived and with it the scarecows, pumpkins and skeletal decorations that bring the fun of the Halloween season into our fair town. Not only the children but many adults enjoy going around to have a look at what their clever or funny neighbors have come up with this time.

Lately, however, we at Weird Nazareth have noticed some outdoor alterations whose nature seems uncertain. Beautifully growing trees around town have been hacked into grotesque and mutilated trunks with stunted branches allowed to protrude here and there, bereft of leaves that might soon have glowed with autumn color.

We can only assume that their owners or pruners are creating a new kind of Halloween art--the Horror Tree, in imitation of the dead and rotting trees we often see in horror films or Halloween art, often with ravens or vultures perched on what remains of their branches!




















Or perhaps it's some kind of art fad, in which people express their existential angst through the form of the trees on their properties, giving voice to their horror at life's vicissitudes, deforming the trees as they feel their lives have been deformed beyond their control, as if Edvard Munch had pruned trees instead of painting The Scream.

Whatever the cause, we hope everyone will take time to observe these creations, for people have sacrificed their magnificent trees, rebelling against all rules of good pruning, in order to present you with these stunted and twisted roosts for the darker birds of the town.
[vultures in these photos added for effect]

Swine Flu Crosses Kingdom Lines

Apparently, the "swine flu" virus is no longer just a problem for those of us in kingdom Anamalia; it has crossed into kingdom Plantae. And Nazareth is ground zero. This tree was spotted in Black Rock woods. It clearly has been infected because its ground roots look just like a pig's head.

Pencil Tree

There seems to be ample supply of weird trees in Nazareth. This tree near Cedar Street is carved to look like a pencil.

Thanks to: Loyal Weird Nazareth reader Ricky I. for the idea for this post

Black Rock Cave and the Blow-Downs

Far back from the borough park, in the woods at Black Rock, there was once a cave or rock shelter. It had been used by the Indians (possibly for vision quests?). When Nazareth Borough Park was constructed, the cave was "filled in with rock in fear of a potential cave-in."* Some say that people who had played there in their youths realized that had been unsafe and filled it so that there children would not do as they did.

Whether part of the fill was garbage or if it was used as a dump after that is not clear, but the site is now frequented by people digging for old stuff (legally? We're not sure), and the walker can find bits of bottles and pottery here and there disturbed by diggers.

Rumors about the cave still fly , one being that it was a limestone cave that, if followed, came out at what is now Jacobsburg State Park. As far as we know, however, it was shallow and little more than a rock shelter.

Curiously, across the trail from the cave is a section of the wood where the trees appear to have been knocked down while young, yet continued to grow, resulting in a group of trees whose trunks lie along the ground and whose branches grow up like trunks. Several kinds of trees are included. If anyone knows the history of this blow-down phenomenon, please leave a comment or get in touch with us by email. It's all part of weird old Nazareth!
*from the Native Americans of Nazareth booklet, in the Nazareth Keepsakes series, 2001.

Speaking of Trees: Huge Beech Tree

Until a few years ago, Nazareth boasted one of the largest-diameter beech trees on the eastern seaboard. Possibly one of a group of trees the Moravians transplanted to their cemetery from the woods, this enormous American Beech was estimated by a tree expert to be older than the town of Nazareth itself. Although it was mentioned in documents at the Moravian Historical Society, when the borough's tree commission took it down in the early 2000's, they failed to leave a stump for future generations to count the rings and wonder at the many changes this enormous living thing had watched over in the course of its years. This is a photograph of a photograph taken several years before its demise.

Blob Tree

This tree is slowly taking over the corner of N. Green and W. Center streets...

Tree with a Face

Another Nazareth oddity is a sycamore tree along Broad Street near Center Street. It appears to have a face, especially when approached on the sidewalk from the Broad and Center Street intersection. It has been called the Buddha Tree but, depending on the light, it can look like something more sinister.

Nazareth seems to have more than its share of unusual or peculiar trees, of which this is one of the most outstanding.

This Ginko Tree Should Put Some Pants On

Seen at the NW corner of West Center and South Church Streets.