My favorite tree in all the world died many years ago. She stood in the depths of The Jefferson National Forest. It was an Eastern Hemlock giant, double-trunked and probably 100 feet tall. At her feet a spring bubbled into the world of light and thirst. I drank the water many times.
The tree seemed female, and she was a comfort on many trips into the woods before and after I made my homecoming to pagan practices and venerating the Good Earth. Then, from parts unknown, or at least from parts unknown in Asia, a tiny parasite called the Wooly Adelgid began to slay all of Virginia’s hemlocks. A recent estimate I saw notes that 80% of the trees are now gone.
These trees, a lynchpin to the entire forest ecosystem, then began to die in other parts of the eastern mountains. The hemlock had long been a source of tannin for settlers, and the cool shade they cast in deep coves provides habitat for trout in mountain streams.
When the devastation of these amazing trees began, speculation focused on the role of acid rain in weakening the trees’ resistance, but even with welcome news about reduced Sulphur-Dioxide from Midwestern power plants in recent years, the death of our hemlocks continued. Some successes have occurred with the introduction of a small beetle that preys on the Wooly Adelgid in its native habitat. This may stem the destruction in the Smokies. In Virginia, simple back-yard solutions I use on my plants, such as spraying horticultural soap, have been applied at a much larger scale to save some specimen trees and thus their DNA for breeding pest-resistant varieties.
May the hemlocks return. In my eight-mile loop I did note survivor trees, none too large. A few showed some infestation, but it was minor.
That’s a think thread to hang a future upon. I know purists who say that 95% native is not native. These same fellow environmentalists dislike the idea of re-introducing the newly developed hybrids of the American Chestnut into nature.
As the reader might guess, I disagree. As a colleague in the sciences put it to me decades ago, by way of his personal friend Bill McKibben, the entire world has felt the hand of man. There is no longer any untouched nature, and thus our natural areas are, in effect, gardens. The wilderness I hiked the other day was once the site of Manganese and Iron mines. And the Eastern forest has returned, despite batterings by Gypsy Moths coming south, Southern Pine-Bark Borers moving north as climate change works its evil magic. The canopy there looked as healthy, minus the hemlocks of course, as it has since I discovered its wonders nearly 30 years ago.
We gardeners cannot make nature do our bidding. We can, however, help shape what happens in nature. We can seed, prune, treat, and guard our plantings. We can press for good laws or press back against laws that do evil, to undo some of the stupidity of our fellow homo sapiens.
In 1900, the Blue Ridge Mountains were cleared completely. The trees were all gone, replaced by farms. Only a few stands in remote coves remained to reseed the world. And if our technological society collapses, as I often fear it may when global oil supplies become scarce, some type of forest will outlast us until, in a distant era, the world again cools and the ice comes marching south.
Just a few days ago, in a place of unparalleled beauty, the surviving hemlocks whispered all this to me. Now I share it here.
Incidentally, I saved a piece of bark from my favorite tree, and it’s one of the most sacred things I own. I place it on my Samhain altar each year. I plan to have it go into my grave with my body. Perhaps the remains of my tree and me will nurture the roots of a healthier forest in a saner world.
May it be so.
