 YWCA
Camp CavellPrimitive Shelter Crushed by "Six Sisters" Trees! Article by: Jill Laidlaw |
 Saturday night we had a wind storm blow through camp with lots of high gusts. The electricity went out at 4:30 in the afternoon from a tree falling a few miles away. Tom and I were driving out of the south camp drive on Sunday when we glanced over to see to our astonishment that the primitive shelter was under a gigantic pile of brush! If you have been on a camp tour then you probably were introduced to the incredible "Six Sisters" trees. They were a wonderful set of six large oak trees all coming out of the same small base area.
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 The
forestry fellow from the extension service said they were all growing
out of the same spot because of a squirrel. The squirrel buried
his acorns in a small hole for the winter and forgot where he put them!
That squirrel actually planted the Six Sister trees for us! They
all grew up at the same time. Since they were evenly matched in
size no one particular tree won out over the others and they all
survived. |
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 Unfortunately
as you can see here, four of the trunks came down right on our primitive
site's picnic shelter! It looks beyond repair! Without supporting
walls like a cabin would have the tree was able to crush the building.
On a cabin it would have just damage the roof area!
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 The
concrete wall under the counter area broke apart and we found newspapers
that were stuffed in the bricks. They were used to keep the mortar
in place when they built the building. We pulled the papers out
and they were copies of the 1961 Detroit News! That is when the
building was built.
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One just missed hitting our bridge as you can see here. There is one large limb pressing down on the far handrail, but I think we can get it off! We hope they will be able to cut the tree without damaging our bridge! There will be a lot of fire wood to haul away when they do cut up these trees! We might have to have a tree cutting party! |
 The
last trunk is tipped back away from the shelter and is kept from falling
by other branches in the tops of the trees. It is
threatening a tree we have been grooming for a future Technical Tree
Climbing! The tree fellows will have to drop it down for safety. |
| We are going to miss them all. We can make a "memorial bench" out of their lumber! Come this summer and see! |
| Check out out calendar! Sign up for a volunteer weekend! 
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Their
trunks were so close together at the base they actually caught water in
crevices in the center and rotted out down below the surface. They
looked just fine from the top. It took the wind storm to break
them apart. They had been counter-weighting each other their whole
lives. When one fell on one side the others fell as well in all
different directions! Here you can see down into the whole that
was created in the middle. It is about four feet deep. You can see
black rot in several places.
