Friday, November 02, 2012

Hartwick Pines State Forest

Daya and Dave at Hartwick Pines

The other week I spent a few days up on the Au Sable River in a cabin with Dave and Daya.  Daya is the colleague I’ve been working with who is from Taiwan (he leaves tomorrow for his home).  One morning, waiting for the rain to stop, we headed over to Hartwick Pines State Park.  I’d never been there and was pleasantly surprised to find a pocket of old growth forest within the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.  It’s not much of a pocket, only forty or so acres of virgin forest, but it’s impressive: huge white and red pines, hemlocks, beech and sugar maples.  To make it even more enjoyable, the beech and maples were at peak color.  
A red and white pine, side by side
At the Visitors’ Center, I struck up a conversation with the ranger about white pines.  Having grown up (as I’ve written about before) in longleaf pine country, I am curious about other types of pines.  The great longleaf forests of the southeast are gone.  At one time, there were over 93 million acres of longleaf forest in the southeast, but today only a few millions acres remain.   Similarly, a lot of the white pine has been cut.  I am not sure how many acres remain of white pines, but there use to be over 10 million acres just in the Great Lakes region and the pines extended across Southern Canada and the northern part of the United States.
 I learned from the ranger, the white and longleaf pines are similar in that neither grows particularly well on their own. For this reason, as they’ve been harvested, they are often replaced with other types of pine, like red pine up here and loblolly pine down south, which grow better in plantations.  Furthermore, they both depend on fires to maintain a healthy forest, which also puts them in conflict with human needs.  However, there are some ways the trees are no alike.  The white pine tends to grow in a mixed forest where the longleaf tended to dominate the canopy and the other trees that grew underneath, such as the blackjack oak, were much smaller.
Under a canopy of trees, when an older tree dies, a younger white pine will shoot up toward the sky, dropping its limbs as it grows, until it is above the canopy where its branches will spread out and add to the canopy’s cover.  I love how these trees tower over the others, something that is easy to see from the water’s edge, where a white pine will stand taller than the surrounding tree.  These mature white pines are valuable timber because as they drop their branches, the wood becomes less knotty.  However, when the tree grows by itself, out from under the canopy, it spreads out wide with long branches that are susceptible to breaking off in ice storms.  Such trees are also more susceptible to insect attack, leaving them weaker and often with a split in the bark, making it less strong.  Such trees are also less valuable as lumber. 
In listening to the ranger, I immediately began to think of ways these trees can serve as metaphors for our lives.  We are not, after all, lone rangers.  We benefit from the community of which we are a part, and we need one another.   Like the tree, by ourselves we are not as valuable and more prone to problems, but within the community our potential is much greater and there is safety.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “A self-sufficient human being is subhuman…  God has made us so that we will need each other.”  In that way, we’re a lot like trees and everything else in God’s glorious creation. We’re interconnected. 
After exploring the visitor’s center, we walked around the old growth part of the forest and visited a logging camp.  We stopped by an old hotel where Henry Ford used to stay when fishing the Au Sable and then had lunch and in the afternoon, I took Daya down the river in one of Dave’s canoes.  It was nice to be away for a few days.

15 comments:

  1. The wisdom and restorative natural juices just drip from your wonderful shots! Thanks



    Aloha from Waikiki,
    Comfort Spiral

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  2. it's all rejuvenation, isn't it, to be in the forest? i'm not surprised one bit how every part is required for the whole to be healthy and then i reflect for a moment on larger life and wish for the simplicity and peace of mind to find the healthy balance, the constant source of rejeuvenation. surely a walk (or run) through the forest today, and perhaps finding a cabin for tonight is a good way to spend a weekend. those are my plans.

    (i was struck by the reference to the aux sables. you've mentioned it before. i live at the junction of aux sables and spanish rivers in ontario, certainly a different aux sables but nonetheless...)

    xo
    erin

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    1. Interestingly, both rivers end up in Lake Huron! I haven't been in that part of Ontario, but have been all around it.

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  3. wow...amazing trees...and i love how being under the others is all a part of their growth...helping them reach tall....fire def is a part of that growth as well...perhaps something we can glean there...

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  4. Odd to hear you speak of the longleaf pine forests. Lana and I were at the local flatwoods preserve today, where they are maintaining and trying to expand a longleaf pine forest. It's small but lovely. We got very nice shots of the trees in the heavy fog we had here this morning.

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  5. Oh I like to believe that we are all inter-connected as well. The trees tell us it's so! Of course your wonderful descriptions, and being in my own home state, I had to google where Hartwick is, and it's on the way to the UP by way of 75 and I just bet I may have been there! Not that I recall the name at all- sadly, but also my first husband and I made it a point to visit nearly every State Park- it seemed they were called something else that escapes me. But we had many a cold by the fire nights that's for sure in the campgrounds- best times ever. Thanks for sharing your lovely visit! Also for the memories!

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  6. I was never a fan of Hillary but I think she was dead right when she said it takes a village to raise a child. Your post reminded me of that saying.

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  7. Just a query. Hasn't the UoM and other archaeological depts discovered that much of the tree cover was due to depopulation with the pincer move between the 'English' and the French diseases over the prolonged period of 150 years plus wiping out those that were living in that area.

    Lovely photos. And I hope you had a gorgeous trip.

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    1. Why the German names on the roads north of the park and what are the empty clearings about. I thought at first they were for cabins but there is nothing in them

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    2. Vince, most of the old trees in the park are in the 350 year old range--which would have put them around the time of the european contact in this part of the world... I don't know why the German names there--I'll have to ask or see if I can find out. As for the clearings, much of that land up there is being used for pulp wood and its planted with slash pine (plus, there has been some large fires up in that part of the state)

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    3. The clearings are about an acre or perhaps as much as five, certainly no more than that. And they are regular albeit random. There are a plethora north of the Marlette Rd and east of the motorway. But they are allover.

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  8. A good lesson on the trees and wisdom came along with it.

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  9. What a wonderful spot and fascinating description of how the trees find their place. Such a true metaphor for life. We do indeed all need one another and everything is connected.

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  10. Great message in the white pine...so interesting how nature works...and how WE work. Love this post, my friend. :)

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  11. I love talking to the rangers. They have such interesting information to share. Now I'm curious what sort of pine trees are growing in our forests.

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