The Anthropomorphic Trees of the Minot Woodland Trail

 

 

 

The Woodland trail with one of the anthropomorphic boxelders on the right.

 

Whenever we go shopping in Minot, I try to hit one or more of the local trails that line the Souris River. Riverine cities are especially blessed with good trails.The roughly mile and a half trail runs through the woodland and across a boggy back channel on a wide graded soft gravel trail. If one takes all the additional dirt trails that wend between the formal trails, the mileage might be double that. When I visited on a Sunday in the 90s, the trees made the walking cool and pleasant. 

To me, boxelder trees have the most personality of our regional trees. The shapes they take are often anthropomorphic and many can have an Entish quality like something straight out of Tolkien. The profusion of burls that can be found on older boxelder give them a particular personality.

 

Imagine the hole as an eye.

A Dancing Green Ash Tree

It is easy to imagine the mouth, bulbous nose and eye on this old boxelder.

Stepping back from the tree, reveals what could be a mass of writhing faces, bulging out from the tree formed by all the different burls.