Solo Snowstorm Comfort: Solitude and Wonder in Appalachia’s Indian Tree Wilds
Some of you will say, hey I’ve seen this before! Nah, not this one you haven’t - because this is the first time I’ve ever included the entirety of this outing into a single video. Until now, the only version available was broken into two parts.
Even though some folks might have seen parts of it before, millions of other people haven’t, so it was important for me to recut it as this Full, Condensed version that stays under an hour in runtime.
Soon, I’ll publish the Full, Extended version as well, which adds another hour more to the runtime.
Braving the Ol’ Shawnee Appalachy - Pt 1: The Easy Part
"Her sides are made of iron!" a sailor shouted as British cannonballs bounced off the USS Constitution in 1812. They weren't. They were made of Georgia live oak, and getting that wood nearly killed the men who cut it.
When Congress ordered six new frigates built in 1794, designer Joshua Humphreys wanted them bigger and tougher than any frigate in the world. That meant one tree: the southern live oak.
Live oak is a strange tree. It doesn't grow tall and straight. It grows low and wide, with massive limbs that twist out sideways. That's exactly what shipbuilders wanted. A warship's skeleton is full of curves, the ribs and the braces that hold the decks to the hull. Cut those curves from straight lumber and you slice across the grain and weaken the wood. With live oak, you could find a limb that had already grown into the shape you needed, grain and all. It's also one of the densest, hardest, most rot-resistant woods in North America.
The best stands were on the Georgia coast. So starting in 1794, ...
