We were in Charlseton, South Carolina for a wedding just after Christmas. There is an album of pictures from the trip on Flickr. Charleston is a beautiful city. I’ll write more about this visit.
One of the highlights of the trip for me was the Angel Oak.
As you can see it is a very large Live Oak tree. That is variously claimed to be between 1300 and 1500 years old and the oldest tree East of the Mississippi the Rockies or the Appalachians. Superlatives and digital cameras are everywhere.
What is not to like: This is a large, beautiful tree with free admission. But what I found most wonderful about it was the way it lived in a perfectly symbiotic relationship with a gift shop. In which you could buy postcards and every other kind of gewgaw with a picture of the tree.
the superlative postcard
Think about this. A large tree without a gift shop attracts no one. A gift shop without a focus attracts no-one. But the symbiosis (great word) of the two creates a destination.
So the business idea to derive from this is that a destination can be created by adding a gift shop to a place of interest. My ideas include:
- Watts Towers in Los Angeles
- the huge Magnolia Tree in Santa Barbara
- the largest Joshua tree in 29 Palms
- the Zzyxx offramp on the way to Las Vegas
- the Georgia Guide Stones near Elberton, Georgia
A gift shop would help make each of these a destination and the gift shop would make money for someone.
Life is good!
I came across your blog posting about the Angel Oak (AO) and thought you should know she is in jeopardy and could use your help:
The Angel Oak is currently threatened by a multi-acre 600-housing unit development. While developers claim they won’t cut down the Angel Oak itself, they WILL clear cut thousands of trees and hundreds of acres of the surrounding buffer forest and filling in a wetlands that supports wildlife. They do not even mention this in their plans, but instead say only that they won’t kill the Angel Oak.” They either don’t understand or won’t admit, that the surrounding forest has for centuries protected the magnificent Angel Oak from weather and too much human attention (climbing, graffiti, fire risk, et. al.) It is not just a solitary living organism, but also an integral part of an ecosystem now facing this major threat,
The massive development will inevitably, eventually, lead to the death of the Angel Oak tree, be it in years or decades is impossible to predict.
A website with more information about this disaster in the works has been set up by locals: http://www.savetheangeloak.org
Visit it, sign up for email updates, sign the petition, and help preserve the Angel Oak Tree—and the surrounding forest it is a part of—for many more human generations.
Sincerely,
Jack Gescheidt
Founder, The TreeSpirit Project
jack@treespiritproject.com
http://www.TreeSpiritProject.com
I do hope the tree is saved, even though it gives-off a sinister vibe.
But if the tree dies, its wood can be carved into a million little souvenir key chain fobs and sold in the gift shop.
A gift shop can turn a simple object or location into a “destination” But now combine this with the added feature of being dog friendly, any tree is dog friendly, and Voila, grass roots capitalism. Make that tree roots capitalism, which man and dog can enjoy in equal measure.