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Pat Hicks, Moon, Moo and You: The Collective Wisdom

By Kate Loving Shenk

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 28May2009 Word count: 1062 Viewed: 324 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Pat Hicks was on our show this week, 4/21/09 and his passion is the history of trees in America. He helps to utilize those trees which have been discarded and left at the bottom of rivers, protected by silt and cold river water, which have left them intact for hundreds of years.

Pat now has a home based business called New Life Hard Wood Floors which specializes in eco-friendly, environmentally sensitive, reclaimed, re-milled antique oak hard pine flooring.

New Life Hard Wood Floors is committed to the ecological friendly recycling of old growth antique hard wood flooring. Future generations can admire, enjoy and benefit from the distinctive and uncommon beauty of these superlative hardwoods which would otherwise be lost forever.

We asked Pat how he came to be so drawn to the preservation of these Long Leaf Pine Trees.

First of all, Pat said, he has always loved antiques. About seven years ago, his neighbor showed him wood that came from 100-200 year old trees that he salvaged from an old building. 60-70 years ago, wood came from 100-300 year old trees.

This is not true today.

Pat experienced a floor made out of 200-300 year old Pecan trees. He experienced 100,000 feet of oak that literally had been thrown away.

These experiences were a wake up call for Pat Hicks.

Salvaging and reusing old growth wood is emotionally satisfying, Pat said.

Pat explained to Joan and I that when the Europeans first came to this country, they clear cut 28 million acres of Long Leaf Pine that stood 100-200 feet high. They were as hard as Red Oak, were termite proof and fire resistant. These trees were rigged to float down river to saw mills. Many sunk to the depths of the river.

Pat is in the process of making a video about the trees and the antique flooring. In it are pictures of these floating trees that are so abundant that you can't see the river for the floating logs.

This image has a sickening effect on the mind. Yet as Pat pointed out, the exact same thing is happening on the Amazon today. These trees are all cleared for farm land, so people can eat.

A tree 100 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter, cut down in 1900, started growing in 14-15-1600. Our landfills are now overflowing with this wood.

We can't find 400 year old trees anymore, or rarely.

The trees we enjoy today are only as old as the Great Depression. Teddy Roosevelt was instrumental in establishing government work programs, where Loblolly Shortleaf Pine were planted in a mass effort to replace the destruction of the Long Leaf Pine tree.

Loblolly Shortleaf Pine grow very fast, say 30-40 years, whereas the Long Leaf Pine grows over a 300-400 year period.

Each piece of the Long Leaf Pine is unique. The forests were dense where they once grew and they had to fight for every ounce of growth due to lack of light.

Pines of today are light weight and not nearly as durable.

These fast growing Loblolly Shortleaf Pine trees were planted in the 1920's and 1930's. By the end of World War II these trees were maturing and used as building materials for suburban growth.

Joan's sister, Betty DeLorme, came on the show at this point and described the grief she experienced when a 30-40 year old Oak Tree had to be cut down in her yard. The miracle of it is that the people who cut down the tree were sensitive to her love for the tree. So often, people are not in tune to how much people love a tree that dies or has to be destroyed, or is cut down carelessly by a a person who "just doesn't get it!"

Trees that grow near us are a part of every fiber of our being!

The people who milled the tree for Betty were also sensitive about the Oak that was cut down in her yard.

Betty wanted bowls to be made from the salvaged wood for her children. The woodworker told Betty that the tree was telling him that it wanted to be made into a lamp and not a bowl.

And lamps were what were created from the tree.

Pockets of Long Leaf Pine still stand in parts of the South, some in South Carolina, and some in Georgia. We are in the process of locating these trees and perhaps will make a pilgrimage to them.

Attitudes about trees have changed. More and more people are pulling up carpet and either preserving the flooring they find or putting down antique floor. The floor will last forever, for our children and their children to always appreciate.

At this point, I told the story of preserving our 150-200 year old barn, lifting up the foundation and mixing batch after batch of cement to restore the front of the barn which also houses the cistern. In the process we also saved a bull frog, who lives in our basement still.

Several years back, we put our property up on the market, and our Realtors told us to tear down the barn.

My husband and I stood up calmly and asked then to leave the house.

This lack of respect for our beautiful property was not what we wanted in a Realtor. We took the house off the market.

American society is recycling, reusing and conserving with greater enthusiasm now than ever before. The plastic age of use it and throw it away is changing as reflected in the growing popularity of Pat's business. The green movement, the Sierra Club and local conservationists are attracted to Pat's message.

Pat mused about the old house my husband Tom and I live in. He thought about the house when it was first built in 1792. The window sills in my living room are deep and thick with oak that grew in the woods beside the house. The wood in this house started growing as a seedling in 1390, perhaps, because the oldest trees were always used to build houses in those days.

What were the trees like in 1390?

If the wood in my house could talk, what would it say?

Having Pat Hicks on the show was a great experience, a consciousness expanding moment. Trees are living breathing beings and are Universal Healing Symbols.

Let us learn to love them as children of God/ess.

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