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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

The Family Tree Re-Listen

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.61.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A listener’s voicemail sent us searching for the story of a very special -- and giant -- oak tree Peoria, Illinois, and the family of arborists who cared for it.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, Dylan.

0:09.0

Hi, Manolo.

0:10.0

How are you?

0:11.0

I'm good.

0:12.0

I'm good.

0:13.0

Everything's fine.

0:15.0

So I'm back again, and this time I have a voice memo for you to listen to.

0:20.0

Great.

0:21.0

I'm excited to hear it.

0:23.0

Yeah.

0:24.0

So this voice memo is from Alex Katz, and they have this vivid memory of this giant oak tree

0:29.0

and peoria Illinois where they grew up.

0:32.0

And the tree is surrounded by so much history.

0:35.0

And this is what they had to say.

0:38.0

Hi, Atlas Obscura.

0:40.0

My name is Alex Katz, and I use they-them pronouns.

0:43.0

I grew up in peoria, Illinois, and one of my most powerful and surreal childhood memories

0:49.0

was going to Giant Oak Park once in elementary middle school.

0:53.0

I remember being overwhelmed by the scale of it all.

0:56.0

The density and bright greenness of the leaves, the age the tree was supposed to be at least 500 years.

1:05.0

And the feeling that somewhere in among those packed leaves was something wonderful or terrifying up in or next to the trunk.

1:15.0

A couple of decades past, and I kind of forgot about it, kind of thought I dreamed it when I called my parents.

...

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