Have you all seen this article. Interesting.

http://www.lifeaspire.com/7630/you-should-know-what-bent-trees-in-nature-really-means/?utm_source=ggnr&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=gg04&src=gg04

So they're NOT just for sitting on, or hiding things under?

wowsers.

I'm going to start doing that at all my hides so people have a place to perch while stamping in.

I'm going to start doing that [...]

You could always use it to point the direction to your box.

We just planted some boxes along the Arrowhead Trail and put one of our boxes right next to a "Bent Tree" along the trail.

Is there a web site with a map for locating the known bent trees?

I knew about this before, because there's a spring SWMBO and I were trying to locate once, and the instructions noted a bent tree pointing to it.

We own 145 acres, and there are a couple of trees on our property that might fit the bill. There's one that looks sorta right except the bend is higher, perhaps 8 feet off the ground. I'll have to take another look at it. And there's another that might also have been an example, it had that cut on the hump that they talked about in the video, but some vandal cut that tree down a coupla years back. It probably wasn't big or old enough to have been a real bent tree, though.

We have one in Franklin TN smack dab on the Union's Fort Granger. It was the first tree my daughter ever climbed. I keep meaning to register it..like..for years. :-/ They redid the park to accommodate the absolute ridiculous growth in this town over the past few years. Maybe I need to do it before somebody doesn't know what they're doing & chops that down. Who knows. Maybe somebody already has.

Is there a web site with a map for locating the known bent trees?

It is in the text of the link to the article above. Mountain Stewards are keeping the info on an interactive map.

I used a bent tree as a part of a letterbox clue, then a hurricane came thru NC and the tree was a causality. Such a shame. This was many years ago, not our most recent hurricane.

-Amanda from Seattle

a bent tree as a part of a letterbox clue

We have used bent trees in clues, but they were probably bent by nature. We called them "horsey" trees! Haven't you straddled one as a child and played Roy Rogers?

Well, I went through the original message and the page it linked to again, I still didn't see the link. So I ran a Google search and came up with it. In case anyone else wants to visit it:

https://www.mountainstewards.org/project/internal_index.html

There doesn't seem to be any way to use this info to run out and see one of these trees, though.

My dad and I spent a lot of time walking in the woods when I was a kid. He took special delight in pointing out these "indian trees".

Quoth Kirbert:
"There doesn't seem to be any way to use this info to run out and see one of these trees, though."

Yep, I spent some time going through the site with no luck. Too bad too, the registry is kind of useless without coordinates. Interesting article though.

It's quite likely that they don't post the coordinates to the trees to protect them from vandals, or other ne'er-do-wells...

This is quite fascinating. In a place I hike frequently I have seen such a tree so yesterday I went over to that tree and sure enough you could see an indentation where indeed it appears there was a strap in place to hold it in the bent over shape. Wow. Never knew this before. Thanks for sharing!

Sounds like a place for a box.

there's a category for Native American Trail Trees on waymarking.com
http://www.waymarking.com/cat/details.aspx?f=1&guid=135b8de2-1d55-448f-9a1c-19ba9710493e
Although the closest one to you (listed on waymarking.com) is in Jacksonville
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3NXC_Timucuan_Preserve_Trail_Tree_Jacksonville_FL

FWIW, I see "bent" trees occasionally and usually they are rather young trees, less than 40 years old at best. Whether the were perturbed by humans or by natural forces is the question.

I wrote and they wrote back. They don't post the coords because most of the trees are on private property. I replied that presumably some of them must be on public land, and some of them are probably on private property but clearly visible from the road, and it'd be nice if their site would help us find those!

There's apparently one closer to me to the north. Still 40 miles, though.

I have a tree right near my house that looks like one of these, but I know it's not. I've lived here 30 years, and I watched this tree get bent over by a storm, and then what had been a branch grew straight up to become a trunk while the trunk, now horizontal, gradually withered beyond that branch.