ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the prescribed beauty, rarity, or ‘majesty’ of places or trees should in fact be read as a type of monstrosity. There are some (un)timely consistencies concerning the etymological/historical dimensions of monstrosity and what National Parks – more specifically, significant trees – can be taken to signify. A monstrosity is that which lingers in the space of the acategorical – that which refuses to be assigned a particular meaning or value and yet nonetheless is interpreted to be a sign of something, or some reckoning, or some critical moment. Only by thinking and writing the world as a knowable ensemble of causes and effects is a venture or monstrosity such as the World Heritage Ranger uranium mine possible. National Parks and the protection of individual big trees can in many ways be viewed as a form of ecological insurance against the general accident of ecocide.
