HomeNovember 20, 1997
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a really big treeEvery Christmas the folks at Brickstone Plaza, an office complex in Andover put up the biggest Christmas tree in North America. Why Andover? I have no idea. These folks get a helicopter to scour the New England forests for the tallest tree and then negotiate to buy it, chop it down, and truck it to Andover. Well, I went out to do some errands this afternoon. I got stuck in a traffic jam on the on-ramp to I495. What can this be in the middle of the day I wondered? An accident? When I finally got on the highway, I crept along at 5 miles an hour. Then I saw it: a really big tree. A really really really big tree. It was laid out on a flat bed truck, anchored with several cables, and accompanied by a police escort. Traffic was tied up in both directions. The folks on the north bound side couldn't get by it and the folks on the south bound side had to slow down to gawk . A little way before the exit to Brickstone, the truck pulled into the breakdown lane to let the traffic go by. I got a good look as I went past it. And I say again, it is really really really big! On the news tonight, I heard it's a hundred feet taller than the tree at the Prudential Center in Boston. They didn't mention how it compares to the one in New York at Rockefeller Center. The news dude also said they embed the tree in concrete to keep it standing. I wonder how many years it took to grow that tall. The Brickstone folks do plant trees to replace the ones they cut, and the wood from previous years' big trees goes to a sculptor who creates magnificent carvings from them. They display his sculptures in a little Xmas theme park around the big tree for the holiday season. The official tree lighting takes place the day after Thanksgiving. I'll try to get some pictures, but it's hard to convey how big the thing is in a snapshot. To get a person and the whole tree in one frame I'd need a really wide angle lens. more on El NiñoI mentioned a satellite view of the El Niño temperature anomalies in yesterday's entry. There are satellite views and lots more info on the El Niño theme page. NOAA/NASA uses red for the hot water instead of white like the picture that impressed me so much, but it's still neat to look at.
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