Transformative experiences motivate me, but this time I was propelled to satisfy my collection fever. Leaping from my car, phone in hand, my Tree-Pokemon game continued.

Keeping their complaints to themselves, my fellow adventurers allowed me to conquer my last quest of this voyage. 

A two-lane road, heading towards Texas State University splits the cracked and weedy parking lot of a dilapidated, possibly defunct (or closed on Sunday???) storefront, labeled Colloquium books.

This is where we located what was once a grove of trees under which early settlers built a log cabin that became San Marcos’s first county courthouse 170 years ago in 1850. Now diminished by urbanization, if you were groovin’ on a Sunday afternoon down Moon Street, (just a couple of blocks from the (chain-link fence encircled) Kissing Oak), you might not realize that these live oaks, nearly swallowed by asphalt and cement, were significant.

Of all the reasons for which to ruin a grove of trees, a lot for cars is one of the more depressing. Searing hot asphalt during brutal Texas summers destroys surface roots. Not to even mention the compression of traffic, impervious paving smothers off oxygen, water and nutrients to the roots, slowly, but steadily killing the trees. These oaks are likely 200 years old!
Park somewhere else.

Could one, perhaps, carefully remove the asphalt, I wondered?

I tried googling this question, envisioning a restoration project. Instead of answers, I found disturbing questions.

Why so little regard for these irreplaceable living artifacts? For trees in general?

Why is a driveway more important?

Sigh.

You can tell I was in a hurry as I briefly documented the group on video. Trotting over, a bit confused by the lack of log cabin or historical marker, (Did I miss these in my haste?), I called the tree the wrong name.

One specimen, sandwiched between a sidewalk and the street, has a bloated nub, covered in an intricately furrowed pattern of bark— a healed-over branch removal wound from long ago.

Clearly elated at hitting my goal: five tree visits over this momentous birthday weekend, my goofy smile in the video says it all.