Introduction

 I recently developed something called cardiophobia which, despite the cool-sounding name, just means that I'm often anxious that my heart is beating too fast, that I'm at imminent risk of having a heart attack, that my heart rate will elevate and never come back down, etc, etc. 

It's been a very fun time inside my head.

I don't share that just to gain your sympathy. In fact, if you're reading this, I would think we either are friends in real life and thus I would hope I already have your sympathy, or we're complete strangers, in which case, I don't expect it. I share this because one of the recommended ways of dealing with such a mental ailment is to exercise regularly- primary, to walk. 

I recently learned that the city I live in, ever proud of its arboreal heritage, maintains a list of the biggest tree of each of a list of the 59 tree species within city limits: from the sturdy American Elm (ulmus americana) to the exotic- and delightfully mononymous- Zelkova (zelkova serrata). The list, incidentally, inspired the name of the website: it's called the Champion Tree Index. 

Maybe you can now see the three disparate threads that I am attempting to weave into a unified braid of narrative. My anxiety means I should be walking more, and the tree index provides a structure for my goal-oriented mind: I want to walk to, take pictures of, and write a little blog post about, each of these Champion Trees. 

This is sort of formless still, but I invite others to do this as well. I think the more attention that is paid to our wealth of trees in this city, the better.

Here's the website: https://www2.a2gov.org/GIS/MapAnnArbor/ChampionTreeTour/

Happy hunting!

-Pat