Trees of Time: A hike through an old-growth forest in New Hampshire

AMC Outdoors, September 2000

By Michele Pavitt

David Publicover offers the analogy as we scramble up a steep hillside in the Glen Ellis area of New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest. Finding a patch of eastern old growth, he says, is a bit like discovering one page from a Shakespearean play. The small sample offers a glimpse of magnificence — but hardly communicates the drama of the whole work.

On this windless afternoon, I'll admit, the isolated stand of old-growth forest located on the western side of Route 16 seems more like a scene from a Stephen King novel. The black flies and mosquitoes have feasted on my neck and are just discovering my earlobes. My legs are scratched from bushwhacking through the hobblebush, dead tree limbs, and assorted species of prickly underbrush. But I decide to reserve judgment, refrain from complaining, and try to perceive the wonder of this ancient, dank-smelling forest.

About two hours later, once we've arrived at another area — this time along the Snyder Brook at the northern side of the Presidential Range — I begin to understand Publicover's passion for these old woodlands. We reach the network of trails from the Appalachia trailhead parking area on Route 2. As we hike the first quarter-mile or so, Publicover, the AMC's forest ecologist, points out the relatively small size and even height of the trees around us. This area has been logged within the past 50 years, he estimates.

With an occasional glance at his topographical map, Publicover leads the way from one trail to another. We begin to see centuries-old trees — the "standing people" as they are sometimes called in Native American writing. A white birch reaches some 20 feet over its neighbors, and a 90-foot-tall, 28-inch-around spruce dominates the landscape, like a sunflower in a garden of daisies. We then hear the turbulent music of the river to our left. The water cascades over smooth stones and settles into deep, gold-green pools. Beside the stream we see sugar maples with massive, twisted turns, and moss-covered yellow birch trees whose roots curl like starfish around boulders and stumps. The forest no longer has the clean-cut look of the 50-year-old grove we just crossed. Here, the shade is darker, the ground spongier, the smells of damp earth and spruce trees more pungent.

"It's a case where you're better off in ignorance — you could walk through a stand of 10-inch-diameter trees and think, 'This is a nice forest,'" says Publicover, who speaks with the eloquent precision of a college professor and wears his hair in a long, pepper-and-salt braid. "But once you've gotten used to seeing [the older trees with diameters of two to three feet], you feel cheated if they're not there. Take out 1 percent of the trees here and you've completely changed it — spiritually, scenically, and ecologically." (See also a related article, "Forest spirit.")

Next:
How old is old growth?

— Michele Pavitt is a freelance writer who lives in Brunswick, Maine.