A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident

When countless trees were felled by last winter’s high winds, this tree was the one we watched. Our house would be significantly demolished if it toppled toward us. It did not. It seems to be not only the tallest, but also the strongest and most resilient tree in our part of the forest. 

It is an eastern white pine, pinus strobus, the tallest tree in the eastern United States. Many are over 200 years old, some over 400. The Iroquois Confederacy called it “the tree of peace,” yet it helped spark a revolution. 

Its long, strong trunk was highly coveted for the masts of sailing ships. This made them particularly attractive to the British Empire in the eighteenth century, for both commerce and war. Great Britain, however, had forested their own land to near bareness, and looked to their colonies. 

A law was passed making it maddeningly difficult for colonists to harvest their own white pines, but allowed confiscation by the crown. This led to the Pine Tree Riot of 1772. The British sheriff of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire was awakened in the middle of the night by colonists angry about his arrest of a local logger. They beat him with switches and small logs, and ran him out of town. This discouraged the British from enforcing the law and inspired a similar event called The Boston Tea Party. 

Long, strong logs are no longer in high demand for the conduct of commerce or war, having been replaced by oil, various metals and perhaps, in the near future, that diminishing but essential natural resource, water. Who knows what the next world power will find essential for their empire, or where they will find it. 

Having lost their high strategic status, white pines are now allowed to grow tall over their neighbors, though they are still in demand for the strength and size of their wood. Perhaps, since they are now used extensively as Christmas trees and holiday wreathes, they can even reclaim their Iroquois status as a tree of peace.