A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

The time had come at last when I was to visit one of these solemn temples of the gods. I was between eight and nine years of age, and was to accompany my parents on a journey from Beverly to Concord, my mother’s native town, in New Hampshire. I give this narrative of personal experience, to prove that our love of nature is an innate feeling, which is exalted, but not created, by the imagination. Nothing ever occupied my mind so intensely as the thought of visiting these Dark Plains. Other objects seen on our journey were amusing and attractive; but this wood was the only one that excited in me a passionate interest. All my thoughts were obscure and indefinite, associated with some dreary conceptions of beauty and grandeur; for in our early years we aspire after more exalted feelings than the common scenes of Nature can awaken.

When at length we entered upon the road that led through this forest, the sweetest music had never held me so completely entranced as when I looked up to these lofty trees, extending their branches beyond my ken, with foliage too dense for the sun to penetrate, and all the mysterious accompaniments of the wood, its silence and darkness, its moanings and its echoes. I watched the scenes as we rode slowly by them,—the immense pillars that rose out of a level plain, strewed with brown foliage, and interspersed with a few bushes and straggling vines; the dark summits of the white pines that rose above the round heads of the other species which were the prevailing timber; the twilight that pervaded these woods even at high noon; and I thought of their seemingly boundless extent, of their mysterious solitude, and their unspeakable beauty. Certain religious enthusiasts speak of a precise moment when they feel a certain change that places them in communication with Heaven. If one is ever in a similar manner baptized with the love of nature, it was at this moment I felt that hidden influence which, like the first emotion of love, binds the heart with an unceasing devotion.

I did not at this early age examine individual objects. Yet now and then the note of some solitary bird, or the motions of a squirrel on the outer trees of the wood, held my attention while I was absorbed in a revery of delight. An occasional clearing, containing a cottage with its rustic appendages, opened the sunshine into our path, and made the wood cheerful by this pleasant contrast. When at length we emerged from this gloomy region into the brightness and cheerfulness of the open country, I still dwelt upon the quiet grandeur of its solitudes, and have never forgotten the impressions I had received from them, nor the passionate interest awakened in me before my journey.

About thirty years afterwards I revisited this wood, and traversed the greater part of it, accompanied by an old friend of the generation that had passed before me. From him I learned that the original growth of timber had been mostly felled, and a second growth of inferior height and dimensions occupied its place. He pointed out to me how the whole character of the wood was changed by the simple act of felling the primitive trees. The ground was not so wet as formerly; the standing waters did not occupy so wide a space; the forest contained more openings, the barren elevations not having been supplied with a new growth of trees. In the place of them were a few scrub oaks, some whortleberry-bushes, and other native shrubs; the trees were smaller, and there was a greater predominance of pitch-pine in all the more sandy parts of the tract, and numerous white birches had sprung up among them.

“Such is the change,” he remarked, “which is gradually taking place over the whole continent.” He seemed to regret this change, and thought the progress of the civilized arts, though it rendered necessary the clearing of the greater part of the wooded country, ought not to be attended with such universal devastation. Some spacious wood ought to remain, in every region, in which the wild animals would be protected, and where we might view the grounds as they appeared when the wild Indian was lord of this continent. Even at that time I found some acres of forest which had been unmolested still retaining those grand, wild, and rugged features that entitled the region to the poetic name of Dark Plains.

THE RED MAPLE.

Not dainty of its soil, but thriving equally well in a bog or upon a fertile river-bank, by the side of a stream or upon a dry eminence; coming forth in the spring, like morning in the east, arrayed in crimson and purple; bearing itself not proudly, but gracefully, in modest green, among the more stately trees in summer; and, ere it bids adieu to the season, stepping forth in robes of gold, vermilion, crimson, and variegated scarlet, stands the queen of the American forest, the pride of all eyes and the delight of every picturesque observer of nature,—the Red Maple. There are but few trees that surpass it in general beauty of form and proportion, and in the variety and splendor of its autumnal tints it is not equalled by any known tree. Without this species, the American forest would hardly be distinguished from that of Europe by any superiority of tinting. It stands among the occupants of the forest like Venus among the planets, the brightest in the midst of brightness, and the most beautiful in a constellation of beauty.

The Red Maple is a tree of second magnitude, very comely at all periods of its growth, producing many branches, forming a somewhat pyramidal top while young, but expanding into a round head as it grows old. It is very evenly subdivided, the central shaft seldom being distinguished above the lower junction of its principal branches. The leaves are palmate, of rather a pale green, and the spray, though neat and elegant, does not equal that of the lime or the birch. We associate this tree with the valleys and lowlands, but a wet soil is not necessary for its prosperity. Some of the finest single trees I have known were standing upon a dry soil; but a forest of them is always located in a swamp.

The Red Maple is one of the most common trees in the southern parts of New England, and it occupies a very wide geographical range. In the North it first appears in the latitude of Quebec. It seems to avoid the company of the rock maple, and forms no large assemblages above the northern boundary of Massachusetts, below which the kindred species becomes rare in New England. The Red Maple is abundant in all the Atlantic States, as far as Florida, and there is no other tree that occupies so large a proportion of the wet lands in the Middle States. According to Michaux, it is the last tree which is found in swamps, as we approach the boundary of vegetation.

Preference is generally given to the other two species for planting by waysides and in pleasure-grounds in Massachusetts, because they are more luxuriant in their growth. Perhaps they are chosen for the sake of variety, being less common in the woods of this State than the Red Maple; and being planted from nurseries, and costly, they are found chiefly in dressed grounds. But the Red Maple is far more interesting and beautiful than any other species, and its lighter foliage, more airy habit, and more delicate spray bring it into better harmony with wild and rude scenery, as the paler and less luxuriant wild flowers better adorn a wood-path than the more showy denizens of the garden. The Red Maple bears a profusion of crimson flowers in the spring, and from them it derives its name. When the flowers have dropped their petals, the keys, or fruit-pods, that succeed them, retain the same crimson hue for some days, gradually fading into brown as they mature.