I bought this framed page of a children’s book several years ago, and I’ve been trying to track down the book it came from without much luck.
If you happen to recognize it, please let me know. I’d be really grateful.
In Yellowwood State Forest, there’s a giant limestone boulder in a tree. Back in 2001, I went looking for this, because I had heard of it on RoadsideAmerica.com.
A refrigerator sized limestone rock, 40 feet high in a tree. This 1,000 pound wonder sways with the wind way up in an oak tree in the Yellow Wood state forest in southern Indiana. Did it rise with the tree’s growth? Artistic vandals? No one knows… A great excuse for a walk in the woods.
At that time, there wasn’t a photo of it on the site, so I was going to get one myself. I wandered around in the woods following the directions for several hours and ran across several hunters and horseback riders, but I never found the rock.
Since then, someone posted GPS directions on Roadside America, and now here’s a whole article about the mysterious boulders.
I have asked others that live there in Bloomington about this, and it turns out many have seen it. How something that large could have got there is unknown to me (my guess is a tornado). I had my GPS and recorded the location: GPS N 39*12.604, W 086*22.314.
Update: Apparently in 2006, the tree fell.
Update: Mystery author Terence Faherty published a short story called “No Mystery” based on the rock in the tree in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in April 2011 and in a short story collection called Tales of the Star Republic. In the story he gives the most plausible explanation of how the rocks got up in the tree. I won’t spoil the answer for you; you should read it for yourself.