A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

Along the level parts of New England and the adjacent country, wherever the rivers were languid in their course, and partially inundated their banks in the spring, were frequent natural meadows, not covered by trees,—the homes of the robin and the bobolink before the white man had opened to them new fields for their subsistence. In the borders of these openings, the woods in early summer were filled with a sweet and novel minstrelsy, contrasting delightfully with the silence of the deeper forest. The notes of the birds were wild variations of those which were familiar to the Pilgrim in his native land, and inspired him with delight amidst the all-prevailing sadness of woods that presented on the one hand scenes both grand and beautiful, and teemed on the other with horrors which only the pioneer of the desert could describe.

The whole continent, at the time of its discovery, from the coast to the Great American Desert, was one vast hunting-ground, where the nomadic inhabitants obtained their subsistence from the chase of countless herds of deer and buffalo. At this period the climate had not been modified by the operations of man upon the forest. It was less variable than now, and the temperature corresponded more definitely with the degrees of latitude. The winter was a season of more invariable cold, less interrupted by thaws. In New England and the other Northern States, snow fell in the early part of December, and lay on the ground until April, when the spring opened suddenly, and was not followed by those vicissitudes that mark the season at the present era. Such was the true forest climate. May-day came garlanded with flowers, lighted with sunshine, and breathing the odors of a true spring. It was then easy to foretell what the next season would be from its character the preceding years. Autumn was not then, as we have often seen it, extended into winter. The limits of each season were more precisely defined. The continent was annually visited by the Indian summer, that came, without fail, immediately after the fall of the leaf and the first hard frosts of November. This short season of mild and serene weather, the halcyon period of autumn, has disappeared with the primitive forest.

The original circumstances of the country have been entirely revolutionized. The American climate is now in that transition state which has been caused by opening the space to the winds from all quarters by operations which have not yet been carried to their extreme limit. These changes of the surface have probably increased the mean annual temperature of the whole country by permitting the direct rays of the sun to act upon a wider area, while they have multiplied those eccentricities of climate that balk our weather calculations at all seasons. There are still in many parts of the country large tracts of wood which have not been greatly disturbed. From the observation of these, and from descriptions by different writers of the last century, we may form a pretty fair estimate of the character and aspect of the forest before it was invaded by civilized man.

During this primitive condition of the country, the forest, having been left for centuries entirely to nature, would have formed a very intelligible geological chart. If we could have taken an extensive view of the New England forest, before any considerable inroads had been made by the early settlers, from an elevated stand on the coast, we should have beheld a dense and almost universal covering of trees. From this stand we might also trace the geological character of the soil, and its different degrees of fertility, dryness, and moisture, by the predominance of certain species and the absence of others. The undulations upon this vast ocean of foliage would come from the elevations and depressions of the ground; for the varying heights of the different assemblages of species upon the same level could hardly be perceived by a distant view. The lowest parts of this wooded region were at that period covered very generally with a crowded growth of the northern cypress, or white cedar. These evergreen swamps would constitute the darkest ground of the picture. The deep alluvial tracts would be known by the deciduous character of their woods and their lighter and brighter verdure, and the dry, sandy and diluvial plains and the gravelly hills and eminences by their white birches and tremulous poplars, their stunted pitch-pines and dwarfish junipers. For a century past the woods have been cleared mostly from the alluvial tracts; and the oaks, the hickories, the chestnuts, and other hard-wood trees, the primitive occupants of the rich and deep soils, have been succeeded in great measure by trees of softer wood, that originally grew on inferior land. The wooded aspect of the country cannot any longer be considered, as formerly, a good geological chart, except in some parts of Maine and the adjoining British Provinces.

One of the conditions most remarkable in a primitive forest is the universal dampness of the ground. The second growth of timber, especially if the surface were entirely cleared, stands upon a drier foundation. This greater dryness is caused by the absence of those vast accumulations of vegetable débris that rested on the ground before it was disturbed. A greater evaporation also takes place under the second growth, because the trees are of inferior size and stand more widely apart. Another character of a primitive forest is the crowded assemblage of trees and their undergrowth, causing great difficulty in traversing it. Innumerable straggling vines, many of them covered with thorns, like the green-brier, intercept our way. Immense trunks of trees, prostrated by hurricanes, lie in our path, and beds of moss of extreme thickness cover a great part of the surface, saturated with moisture. The trees are also covered with mosses, generated by the shade and dampness; and woody vines, like the climbing fern, the poison ivy, and the ampelopsis, fastened upon their trunks and trailing from their branches, make the wood in many places like the interior of a grotto. Above all, the traveller would notice the absence of those pleasant wood-paths that intersect all our familiar woods, and would find his way only by observing those natural appearances that serve as a compass to the Indian and the forester.

In primitive woods there is but a small proportion of perfectly formed trees; and these occur only in such places as permit some individuals to stand in an isolated position, and spread out their arms to their full capacity. When rambling in a wood we take note of several conditions which are favorable to this full expansion of their forms. On the borders of a lake, a prairie, or an open moor, or of an extensive quarry that projects above the soil, the trees will extend their branches into the opening; but as they are crowded on their inner side, they are only half developed. This expansion, however, is on the side that is exposed to view; hence the incomparable beauty of a wood on the borders of a lake or pond, on the banks of a river as viewed from the water, and on the circumference of a densely wooded islet.

Fissures and cavities are frequent in large rocks not covered with soil, allowing solitary trees which have taken root in them to acquire their full proportions. In such places, and on eminences that rise suddenly above the forest level, with precipitous sides, overtopping the surrounding woods, we find individual trees possessing the character of standards, like those we see by roadsides and in open fields. But perfectly formed trees can only be produced in openings and on isolated elevations such as I have described; and it is evident that these favorable circumstances must be rare. The trees in a forest are like those human beings who from their infancy have been confined in the workshops of a crowded manufacturing town, and who become closely assimilated and lose those marks of individual character by which they would be distinguished if they had been reared in a state of freedom and in the open country.

The primitive forest, in spite of its dampness, has always been subject to fires in dry seasons, which have sometimes extended over immense tracts of country. These fires were the dread of the early settlers, and countless lives have been destroyed by their flames often overwhelming entire villages. At the present time the causes of fire in the woods are very numerous; but before they were exposed to artificial sources of ignition it may have arisen from spontaneous combustion, caused by large accumulations of fermenting substances, or from lightning, or from the accidental friction of the trunks of half-prostrated trees crossing each other, and moved by a high wind. The forests in every part of the world have been subject to conflagrations; and there seems to be no other means that could be used by nature for removing old and worn-out forests, which contain more combustible materials than any young woods. The burned tracts in America are called barrens by the inhabitants; and as the vegetation on the surface is often entirely destroyed, the spontaneous renewal of it would display the gradual method of nature in restoring the forest. The successions of plants, from the beautiful crimson fireweed, through all the gradations of tender herbs, prickly bushes, and brambles, to shrubs and trees of inferior stature, until all, if the soil be deep and fertile, are supplanted by oaks, chestnuts, hickories, and other hard-wood trees, are as regular and determinable as the courses of the planets or the orders of the seasons.

THE ASH.

It is interesting to note the changes that take place from one season to another in the comparative beauty of certain trees. The Ash, for example, during the early part of October, is one of the most beautiful trees of the forest, exceeded only by the maple in variety of tinting. In summer, too, but few trees surpass it in quality of foliage, disposed in flowing irregular masses, light and airy, but not thin, though allowing the branches to be traced through it, even to their extremities. It has a well-rounded head, neither so regular as to be formal, nor so broken as to detract from its peculiar grace. When standing with other trees in midsummer, in the border of a wood, or mingled with the standards by the roadside, the Ash would be sure to attract admiration. But no sooner have the leaves fallen from its branches than it takes rank below almost all other trees, presenting a stiff, blunt, and awkward spray, and an entire want of that elegance it affects at other seasons.