Everybody knows that I am a tree guy. I spend too much time looking at them, writing about them, photographing them, and talking about them. 
I have been known to spend precious hours of family vacation time going to see them. I traveled to Longwood, Fla., to see famous bald cypress, the Lady Liberty. I traveled to Sequoia National Park in California to see the giant sequoia, the General Sherman.
I have seen state champion trees at a country club in Oklahoma, a church in Arkansas, a cemetery in Kansas, and a farm in Missouri.
At one point my family would cut me off if I started talking about trees. They said I talked about them too much. They told me to start talking about something else.
I can’t blame them. Most people just don’t notice them as much as I do. Trees are my thing. They are my passion and they seem to be everywhere I look.
Just when I had determined that I had taken the champion tree thing far enough and that it was time to pick up a new hobby, I started noticing that others were talking about trees, too.
