The Angel Oak on Johns Island, SC is said to be over 1400 years old.

      Angular limbs spread across the sky above me, spanning over 160 feet.  This live oak tree has been here for 1400 years—five times the normal life span for live oaks. 

The arms of my tree meander around each other in all directions.  Spiral, curving, wild tentacles that grow through each other and into the ground and then back up, into each other.

The sunlight that comes through the tiny gaps between the leaves peaks through at me like tiny, sparkling watchful eyes. 

                       The Angel Oak’s trunk is twenty-five and a half feet in circumference, and, as I sit here, I wonder just how many children have counted their footsteps around my tree.  How many footsteps did it take to give this angel her heart?  Its massive trunk envelops me with an inherent, yet mysterious sense of security and comfort that could seemingly only come from….an angel.  This is the story of how this glorious angel saved my life.

                       No one knows the actual age of the tree, because the only way to officially learn the age of a live oak is to cut it open and count the rings.  The Angel Oak is rumored to be over fourteen-hundred years old and also rumored to be the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi River.  Geologists debate the actual age of the tree.  I choose to ignore them.  Whatever its actual age, the tree is colossal and it is ancient.  It stands proudly in an obscure wooded area of Johns Island.  The tree stands sixty-five feet tall; with the longest limb extending eighty-nine feet. The tree’s canopy shades an area of over seventeen-thousand square feet.

                    The property where the Angel Oak rests was originally part of a land grant to Jacob Waight from King Charles II of England in 1717.  Waight owned many plantations, including The Point, later to be called the Angel/Hoopstick plantation, where the Angel Oak sits patiently, silently watching generations come and go. 

                       The property was passed through the family until it adopted the Angel name in 1810.  Martha Tucker married Justus Angel and received the live oak from the will of her late father as wedding gift and marriage settlement.  Thus, the great oak inherited the only fitting name possible….the Angel Oak.

                       I think that’s what it is about this place for me.  The land has remained unchanged for so long.  People came and went.  Churches, plantations, and secret meeting places were erected, but most fell, through the destruction of man and nature.  In the end, there was only the wilderness.  Nothing changed, and suddenly, that became an asset.  The “old” buildings are now “authentic” and “historical” and the “wilderness” is actually still the “wilderness.”

*The Angel Oak needs our help!  Please visit www.savetheangeloak.org for details on how to help save this amazing tree.