The Mighty Have Fallen
What mighty have fallen? Well, if we're talking about the building of America on the backs of the American forest, just about all of them. But if the subject's sudden catastrophe, I think of two species: the American Elm and the American Chestnut.
I want to talk about the chestnut, because it was very much on my mind as I visited the forests of Vermont and New Hampshire, places once stuffed with these towering and beneficent trees.
(Before I go any further, if you're already hooked on the topic, you should know about the just-released book, Mighty Giants: An American Chestnut Anthology, a project celebrating the 25th anniversary of American Chestnut Foundation.)
Fallen chestnut burrs, not a sight you'll see much of in the eastern woods anymore, but it's been known to happen. Ever seen 'em?
photo credit: Courtesy of Great Smoky Mountains National Park Library
If you're new to this story, let's cut to the chase: within 50 years of the arrival of an Asian fungus we now call chestnut blight in the late 1800's, an estimated FOUR BILLION TREES were LOST. We're talking GONE.
You could just see the trees dying. You could see them changing from time to time. One would die; the leaves would turn brown and fall off in the middle of the summer ... people couldn't believe it. They thought they'd come back.
One of the eye-witnesses account from Mighty Giants. This is from a NYTimes account, summer 1911:
Chestnut Trees Face Destruction -- Trees Worth Millions Dying in This State from a Canker for Which There Is No Remedy. Eats Beneath The Bark -- Sprays and Other Attempts to Check Spread of the Paraside Unsuccessful -- Trees in Botanical Park Doomed.
Nothing new under the sun. Not with what worries us today. But optimism abounds about the future of the chestnut and our ability to undo damage (could it be?) from very un-Pollyanna-like people like Bill McKibben, who wrote the short introduction to this softback book.
... the story of the chestnut echoes like a fable -- a fable about carelessness, and about the hard work and hard love needed to make up for that carelessness. A fable we need to start telling more and more, for the hope it gives and the lesson it provides.
OK, so it's a little Pollyanna-ish but the point's this: people have been and continue to be devoted to the return of the chestnut. And who's to argue with their vision, their certainty, that the job can be done.
American Chestnut memories, anyone? Bring 'em on...
"At last when the tree can serve us no longer in any other way it forms the basic wood onto which oak and other woods are veneered to make our coffins." P.L.Buttrick, 1915. Sorry, couldn't resist the quote. Needless to say, what a mighty giant she is, Castanea dentata.
photo credit: Courtesy of Great Smoky Mountains National Park Library
Frank Meyer, "intrepid and tireless plant explorer" for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, tracked the source of the chestnut blight back to China in 1913. (His pix alone is reason enough to see this book.)
2:00 PM ET | 10-31-2007 | permalink
