The Tree of Life at Disney’s Animal Kingdom is 145 feet tall, with more than 8,000 branches and 100,000 leaves. In a genius feat of upscaling, the underlying framework is a refitted oil rig, chosen in part for its ability to withstand Florida’s hurricanes. This framework is covered in concrete and a special plaster-like cement that could be sculpted into the tree’s “bark”.
And the bark is where the real magic is. The whole thing is a tribute to the animal kingdom—covered in more than 300 animals, both living and extinct, including David Graybeard, a chimpanzee close to Jane Goodall’s heart, who was added when she visited during construction and noted (much to the embarrassment of the Imagineers, I’m sure) that no chimps had been included in the design.
Like many of the trees sculpted for Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the Tree of Life is a baobab tree. I always get excited when I see them around the park. They’re all around the safari area but this, the Tree of Life, is far and away the most prominent. Baobab trees are a key part of of story in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, my older son’s favorite book when he was very little. (He once confused the heck out of the students in his preschool when he showed up dressed as the title character in a sea of princesses and Marvel characters one Halloween.) Not the intended reference here at Animal Kingdom, I suppose, but these things all speak to us in different ways.
I’d asked where you wanted me to go this weekend for pictures over on my Instagram, and you shocked me with resounding votes for both EPCOT and DAK, so you’ll be getting lots from both places over the course of this week. This seemed like the obvious place to start. A picture of The Tree of Life certainly isn’t unique. We’ve all taken dozens as we pass through the entrance to the park. But what I’m slowly learning here is that sometimes the most obvious subjects are obvious simply because they are the most beautiful and mean the most to us. The boys and I were leaving Animal Kingdom near golden hour last night, and she looked stunning. I literally held the camera over my head to frame it how I wanted—50mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 200. I’d taken probably hundreds of pictures over the course of the day, but this last one is the one that ended up starting our week together.