Perhaps. I don't know the history. It appears to be a pretty old tree and the portion of the trunk with the carving looks to have been dead for awhile. It's surprising that any of the tree still lives. Quite remarkable really. I've been walking past it since my recovery and only noticed it a few days ago! So much for my powers of observation.
One needs such events. I am a physicist, by definition, the ultimate empiricist and thus should be a keen observer. Nonetheless, when I came back from Brussels in 1967 I was riding in the car with my late Uncle Jon and I was pointing out all the motorcycles on the road and, mind you, there weren't a fraction of the number of motorcycles then as there are now. He allowed as how he hadn't seen all them. Then he asked me if I had seen the squirrel on the telephone line, the cat on the other side of the road, this bird, that bird, somebody else's bird, and the chipmunks (he's the uncle that taught me how to hunt). I'd seen some of what he was pointing out but had missed a lot. He'd seen the wildlife and missed the motorcycles, I'd done the opposite. It was a lesson that if I was going to do physics, I was going to have to learn how to see what was there, not what I was expecting or looking for. It's a distinct shift in perspective.
Beautiful! Thank you.
Did someone carve that face in the living wood?
Perhaps. I don't know the history. It appears to be a pretty old tree and the portion of the trunk with the carving looks to have been dead for awhile. It's surprising that any of the tree still lives. Quite remarkable really. I've been walking past it since my recovery and only noticed it a few days ago! So much for my powers of observation.
One needs such events. I am a physicist, by definition, the ultimate empiricist and thus should be a keen observer. Nonetheless, when I came back from Brussels in 1967 I was riding in the car with my late Uncle Jon and I was pointing out all the motorcycles on the road and, mind you, there weren't a fraction of the number of motorcycles then as there are now. He allowed as how he hadn't seen all them. Then he asked me if I had seen the squirrel on the telephone line, the cat on the other side of the road, this bird, that bird, somebody else's bird, and the chipmunks (he's the uncle that taught me how to hunt). I'd seen some of what he was pointing out but had missed a lot. He'd seen the wildlife and missed the motorcycles, I'd done the opposite. It was a lesson that if I was going to do physics, I was going to have to learn how to see what was there, not what I was expecting or looking for. It's a distinct shift in perspective.