THE CATSKILL GEOLOGISTS BY PROFESSORS ROBERT AND JOHANNA TITUS - Finding the perfect forever home

CATSKILL - You might think that our home is piled, from the floor to the ceiling, with rocks, minerals and fossils. Right? Well, there are some of each, but not a whole lot of them. We don’t do much collecting. We think that most of these things should be left in that great museum of the outdoors. Still, every once in a while, we spot something special, something that needs to be brought home. Take a look at our first photo. Do you recognize what it is? Yep, that’s a fossil stump of an Eospermatopteris, AKA a Gilboa tree. It’s one of the world’s oldest known fossil trees, something our Catskills are noted for having. Decades ago, we were out exploring with our good friend, the late Howard Bartholomew of Middleburgh and there it was, in the middle of a stream channel.

No, this was not something that we could leave outside. We brought it home and put it on the floor, in a corner of our dining room. That was probably 20 years ago, and it has been sitting there all that time. It always made a good conversation piece when company came calling. But, other than that, it just sat there, taking up space. We were glad we found it and brought it home; it needed to be preserved. But, as the years ticked away, we gradually realized that we should find a better place for it – a forever home.

A few months ago, we heard from the Mountain Top Arboretum. They wanted to have us speak about our new book. (You have gotten a copy, right?) We have been active with them ever since their founding decades ago, and have always been very happy to participate in their events. But then it occurred to both of us that this would be the perfect time and place to give our tree stump away. What better location than a Catskills arboretum? Have you been there? It’s a short distance north of Tannersville. They have a landscape dotted with living tree species from all over. There are also trails that wind their ways through a fine forest. And they frequently hold events of great interest. The Arboretum is, in short, a real asset to our Catskills. You will have little trouble finding their webpage and joining.

As the day of our talk approached, we decided to ham up our donation. We loaded the tree stump into a box and wrapped it in gift wrap. When we got there, we ostentatiously dragged that heavy gift to where we would speak. We let people wonder what was in there while we did our talk. When finally opened, it was very well received. This is, indeed, the perfect forever home for that fossil. The Arboretum really did need to have something like this.                   

Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at ‘thecatskillgeologist.com.”

Johanna and Robert, left and right of the fossil stump, with Arboretum folk Mark Wolfe, Abbey Coffin and Jennifer Hammerlein.