Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones. Tax Day is in the rearview and Earth Day is on the dash. 

Despite this positivity, last edition was a glimpse at my own aging process: It turns out my Millennial skillset is no longer suitable for understanding anchored hyperlinks. I tried to do a fancy two-step and ended up breaking a Command + K hip, so if you want to know how to compost in Charlottesville or anywhere, say a little prayer and try clicking those links.

This week, we’re talking about an actual legend in aging gracefully — the second-oldest white oak tree in Virginia.

One of the most underrated parts of getting to that point in a relationship where you meet each other's families is that you’re provided with a helpful mirror back to how your own family operates. 

You might find out, for example, that you’d grown up in a family whose go-to dinner table carbohydrate was always rice, while your partner grew up in a potato household. Because it was the default, you never knew otherwise. Or you might find out that while your family relaxes on vacations with full-day walking tours, other families enjoy their OOO by sitting down — typically on the beach with a book and a beverage. 

The biggest lesson I learned after G and I had been dating long enough to meet her family is that when we visited, they picked us up from the airport. They are an in-person airport family. 

Some families will on occasion pull up at Arrivals, but the prevailing logic there is: “Next time you’ll call a cab, right?” A cab takes you to and from the airport promptly — and it only involves a one-way trip. If a family member or loved one picks you up, they’re actually driving there and back. That’s double what you’d be doing in a cab. 

Imagine how that logic went down after G walked in the front door the first time I didn’t pick her up from the airport. No potatoes that night.

Fast forward many years and I now know a lot about driving to and from DCA, BWI, IAD, and everyone’s favorite gal: CHO. 

The drive to pretty much every airport is garbage, but if you go the back way to the Charlottesville airport to avoid Route 29, you’ll see the most amazing thing: a perfect massive oak tree right below the runway. It’s literally this 🌳. And even if you’re speeding to get to Arrivals on time, you still get a good 30-second viewing of its 100-foot leafy green canopy.

So last week, instead of driving to the airport to pick up or drop off, I convinced G, my parents, and their getting-so-much-better lab to join me to check out this tree up close.

For somewhere between 300 and 450 years, this oak tree was not on CHO airport property. Never do math in public, but I believe that means it was planted sometime in the 1600s, right when this country was getting going. (For reference and future Jeopardy fodder, the Virginia Company landed in Jamestown in 1607. The first women arrived in 1608.) 

All this makes the “Earlysville Oak” the second-oldest oak tree in Virginia. Jefferson, Monroe, Edgar Allen Poe — they all probably saw it. Tina Fey, Katie Couric, Alexis Ohanian — if they ever drove to the airport as UVA students, they probably did too. And anyone going the back way to the Hollymead Target? They’ve definitely seen it.

When the Charlottesville airport expanded in the early 2000s, the developers thankfully didn’t bulldoze the tree, but they did put a big ole security fence around it. This means if you want to go sit beneath its branches and marvel at the wonders of 400+ seasons of life, you have to email Connie Cook at the Charlottesville Airport Authority.

I requested access via this form on Sunday, March 30. Before 8:30am on Monday, March 31, Connie had emailed me saying permission had been granted. We love Connie. Connie gets things done before you even think about making coffee or switching from a cute work top to a cute work sweater.

Connie also told me the rules (no climbing on the tree, no marking up the tree, etc), as well as where to park and who to call to unlock the fence (the airport police). I said yes will do, and we were all set for our visit.

The plan for our tree “appointment” was no plan. Just go look at this tree, pull up picnic chairs, and sit peacefully near the king of the forest. If a plot were to arise, great. If not, I was okay with a short newsletter edition. 

Starting the relaxation click now. 

👀

The thing with my family is that they’re the ones from the intro paragraph who relax by doing activities. They are not the sit-on-the-beach-and-read-a-book family.

We made it to 4 minutes and 30 seconds of peaceful sitting and chatting, and then I had to whip out a bunch of tree facts to keep the activities rolling. Including:

That’s about where my tree facts end. Did I mention this is the second-oldest white oak in Virginia? 

Thankfully, as soon as I ran out of facts, the most exciting part of the day — and arguably the least sustainable part — happened. If you’re sitting under the oak looking around at the empty field and bright blue sky, and then you blink, by the time you open your eyes a Delta twin-engine will be roaring right past you.

And then a Cessna. And then like four or five private jets. Hell yeah, big tree and an air show.

It was the perfect cadence of moment of arboreal stillness + jet fuel blast that my family apparently needed. We stayed there for another hour at least.

So the first part of this story is about how it’s nice to be in the woods with your family, trying to do nothing but hang out. The second part of this is slightly more sciency — it’s about how being near our oak can be a painkiller.

A new study by a team from the University of Vienna and University of Exeter shows that watching nature scenes can reduce pain literally at a brain scan-level, not a subjective “I feel happy” or “I feel relieved” level. 

The scientists got 49 participants to “receive pain” through small electric shocks (hope they signed the right waiver) while watching videos of nature scenes, city scenes, and indoor scenes. According to the study, these people not only reported feeling less pain when watching the nature scenes, but the scans also showed “the specific brain responses associated with processing pain changed too.”

Pretty cool stuff, and these were just videos of nature, not the real deal.

I wish I’d read this study before we visited the Earlysville Oak, as I could have run a little parallel experiment seeing if we were indeed feeling less pain as we walked back to the cars. If I had to guess, I’d say we all felt virtually painless as we sat under the oak, except for Nixie who was deeply troubled that no one was throwing the tennis ball for her. 

I also think that this guestimated low level of pain was probably coupled with a strong feeling of relief at not being crammed into a middle seat on one of the planes overhead — or worse, hovering over an airplane toilet as the captain turns on the seatbelt sign. Much better to be near the oak.

I should text the family chat to see how others felt.

One of the coauthors nicely summed up both the possibilities of experiencing nature virtually when patients can’t physically get outside, and he also hit on the Climate Trifecta principle quite well: 

“We hope our results also serve as renewed evidence for the importance of protecting healthy and functioning natural environments, encouraging people to spend time in nature for the benefit of both the planet and people.”

Normally this is the part of the newsletter where I list a handful of practical ways to implement things. But “go be in nature” feels pretty self explanatory. So I have only a few additional notes:

1️⃣ If you live in central VA, call Connie and visit the Earlysville Oak.

2️⃣ If you don’t live near here, google “oldest tree in [state, city].” Go visit that tree. Or another old, tall, wide, pretty tree. Here’s the oldest in MA, TX, and the Queens Giant in NYC. CA takes the cake with the literal oldest tree in the world, with Methuselah clocking in at 4,855 years old jfc.

3️⃣ No matter where you live, the key here is to go out and just be in nature without having an agenda/plan/strategy/walking tour lined up. Sit under a tree and enjoy. And leave the Advil at home.

Send pics!

Good news from Charlottesville Community Bikes. Let’s go, Q2.

Mom and Dad, I give you full permission to donate my bike from middle school that’s still in the basement. Here’s how.