Erin and I heard a great feature on NPR this morning about, well, really big trees in the Pacific Northwest. The reporter followed tree hunter Bob Van Pelt on his quest to identify and measure a giant fir he’d seen a few years before.

The tree in question had in fact fallen due to a fungal infection, but the statistics are still astounding: it had a trunk circumference of more than FORTY TWO FEET. That’s the broken stump at right; NPR reporter Ketzel Levine is about halfway up the stump on the left side in a green slicker.

There’s a summary of the feature at NPR, of course, which also includes a slide show of 8 other giant trees. These things can be literally thousands of years old. Astounding.