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Article: Saving the spirit trees: by cataloging the Virgin Islands' "remarkable" trees, a university professor hopes to save its wealth of stories about ancestral shrines and jumbie trees--and create a link between environmentalism and the islands' cultural history.("Remarkable Big Trees or Cultural Interest in the U.S Virgin Islands")
- Article from:
- American Forests
- Article date:
- September 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 American Forests. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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There are spirits in the baobab tree. Many older residents of the U.S. Virgin Islands know this to be true. Look at its trunk, massive and columnar and reaching towards the sky, its branches like interlaced fingers. When all the world was made, the baobab was the last tree created. That's what the grandmothers say.
Large baobabs are old, old trees, but they are comprised mostly of water. When they die, the water evaporates. The bark and bole turn to dust and blow away. Like human flesh, the tree goes back into file ground. That's only one reason the spirits live there. Jumbles--the spirits, the undead--love to hide in the baobab. For hundreds of years, Virgin ...