Take a deep inhale, you're outdoors, you can hear the birds chirping, it smells so good,

it is spring out.

Of course, if you're like me, you'll immediately start sneezing because you have seasonal

allergies and there's pollen everywhere.

But ignoring that, spring is beautiful and it's a time when I notice the trees.

I look up and I see these great giants that I live among blooming back to life.

And I remember that trees are my incredible neighbors.

They are these giants that can live for hundreds or even thousands of years.

These have been living longer than the entirety of America.

You might walk past a tree that was around during the Incan Empire.

So to kick off spring and allergy season and celebrate the life of trees, we're going

to bring you two stories, two tree stories, with our places, editors Jonathan Carey and

Michelle Cassidy.

Jonathan has the first story.

It takes us all the way back to the 1800s and to meet a truly magnificent tree.

In Hemptive Virginia stands a magnificent oak, one that has seen a lot over the years.

The tree is absolutely massive.

It's 50 feet in height and about 100 feet in diameter and it has these big branches

that just reach outward and then just cascade down to the earth.

The oak itself is estimated to be more than 200 years old with suggestions that it may

even be older.

It's known as a witness tree, which is a term reserved for trees that have witnessed

...