I think I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

- Joyce Kilmer, “Trees”

Until recently, I thought that all big trees were oaks, and any tree with needles on it was a pine. A stroll through the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest opened my eyes.

Kilmer’s virgin forest contains the largest and oldest trees in the East, including 800-year-old hemlocks, poplars, beeches and basswoods. Tucked back in the Little Santeetlah Valley of Graham County, the 3,800-acre old-growth forest protects 100 different species of native trees. Sadly, the only leaf I recognized was a maple because I’d seen it on a hockey jersey.

So I put down Sports Illustrated and picked up Peterson’s Field Guide to North American Trees after my first visit to Kilmer. I began carrying leaf charts with me on morning jogs. Sitting in traffic, I passed the time by identifying trees along the median. I found myself sneaking into neighbors’ backyards to investigate trees. Dogs chased after me, but not before I grabbed a handful of fallen leaves from the yard.
Slowly, my vision sharpened. Instead of forest, I saw trees — vase-like elms and three-needled loblolly pine and mitten-shaped sassafras leaves. Other things came into focus, too. Not all butterflies were monarchs. Cardinals weren’t the only red-colored birds after all. And in faceless crowds, I started to see individual human beings, as varied and colorful as fall foliage.

Splashes of reds, maroons, and lemon-yellows were spilling down the mountains when I returned to Kilmer last week. I began my hike in the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness — 17,000 acres of wild, rugged terrain surrounding the old-growth memorial forest. From the Haoe Lead trailhead, I climbed 3,000 feet in three miles along a steep, switchbacky slope. Near the summit of Haoe Mountain, maples and hickories gave way to red spruce and what looked like Fraser fir – maybe it was balsam.

The trail topped out at Lookout Point, which offered panoramic vistas of the Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness. The green mountain canvas was splatter-painted with color. Below me, ribbons of river threaded through the valley. I didn’t think there was so much unfragmented forest still left this side of the Mississippi.

From Lookout Point, I descended the ridge to Naked Ground Trail, named for the grassy high-elevation meadow where it originates. The trail itself was anything but bare. I repeatedly banged my boots against gnarled tree roots, and thickets of waxy-green rhododendron (or was that mountain laurel?) shrouded the narrow footpath as it twisted down toward Little Santeetlah Creek.

Finally I arrived at the western boundary of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. Unlike the surrounding second-growth wilderness, Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest has never been logged.

The difference was startling. My pupils swelled as soon as I entered the virgin forest. Towering trees shaded out the sun. Fog seeped through the cove and floated along the creek. In the dimly-lit forest, everything was a deeper hue of green – mats of creeping club moss, braids of maidenhair fern along the trail, needles fluttering down from hundred-foot hemlocks.

I craned my neck toward the leafy ceiling, trying to identify trees as I passed. Many were so tall that I could not see leaves at the top, but I recognized the straight-backed trunks of tulip poplars and the sycamores’ mottled, peeling bark. They groaned in deep baritone as a soft wind tip-toed through the trees.

Then, suddenly, CRASH! A thundering thud shook the duff. Fifty yards away, a dead oak limb had fallen, sending tremors that I felt in the soles of my feet.

If a tree falls in this forest, you’ll hear it, all right. And hear it often. All around me, logs and limbs littered the forest floor. Their rot created rich, black humus to nourish new trees. Cycles were unbroken here, and time seemed to slow down and curl back into itself.

I wanted to tap the memory of these trees. Their roots were older than America. Native inhabitants once strolled beneath them. Their fallen branches fed the fires of Cherokee. They witnessed white man’s arrival. The trees must have shuddered when ancient forests all around them were clear-cut.
Surely they heard growling chainsaws in nearby valleys growing closer and closer. Did they remember? Could they forget?

The trees were silent. The wind sighed.

I continued walking downstream toward the parking lot, where flecks of sunshine filtered through the canopy. I stood at the edge of pavement and primordial forest, and turned back. I wasn’t ready to leave. I walked along the creek, listening to the water. Then I stopped and leaned against a tree. It was a mighty hemlock flexing its muscled limbs skyward. Its girth must have measured more than 20 feet. It was the largest living thing I had ever seen.

Without forethought, without considering how sentimental and silly I must have looked to the tourists passing by, I hugged that hemlock. My outstretched arms barely made it around one side of the trunk. I smelled sweaty tree tannin; I felt its furrowed bark against my cheek. And I swear I could hear xylem and phloem throbbing through the cambium.

My tree hug wasn’t some sad, sappy, slushy expression of loss, but instead a wide-armed embrace of what still remained — a giant hemlock in a centuries-old cathedral of forest. I straightened my spine and walked out into the sunlight.

My eyes are still adjusting. I see trees differently now, not just as species with names, but as shadows of their former – and future — selves. I watch them grow.

(Will Harlan writes about the outdoors. He can be reachd at wharlan@hotmail.com)

 

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