On a recent woodland hike, I saw three trees growing in the same spot and all appeared to be the same age. I stopped and pondered how three trees, a white pine, an eastern hemlock and a birch, could be so intimately woven together, with their branches embracing each other in the sky and their roots crisscrossing one another in the earth. While standing there I went on an imaginary journey into the past to discover how this trio of trees got their start in life together.
I imagined it must have been the year 1927. Calvin Coolidge was in the While House, Herni Bergson won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs, Charles Lindbergh flew non-stop across the Atlantic and in the fall of that year a red squirrel was quietly gathering provisions for the cold months ahead. The squirrel's home was under an old rotting oak stump and he was collecting all kinds of seeds for his underground cache in preparation for the long New Hampshire winter.
That year the winter arrived on schedule with below freezing temperatures and above average snow falls. By spring time the squirrel's food pantry was bare, but not entirely. Lodged in the corners of the cupboard were the seeds of a white pine, an eastern hemlock and a birch. With the warm sun shining through the burrow's entrance combined with the moisture of melting snows and spring rains, the seeds germinated into tender seedlings that poked their way upward through the rich soil. I wondered why an oak tree might not have made this a quartet of trees, but it must have been that the squirrel and his kin had eaten all the acorns in their larder.
The seedlings soon became saplings and as they grew through the changing seasons, they weathered many storms together. All three are “state trees.” The white pine is the state tree of Maine, the eastern hemlock is the state tree of Pennsylvania and the white birch is the state tree of New Hampshire. Each has played an important role in early America. The white pines provided masts for tall sailing ships, the hemlocks' bark was used for tanning leather and the birch trees became famous for birch bark canoes, birch beer and they were celebrated in Robert Frost's poetry.
In my mind's eye I saw how these three trees could have been given their start in life from the root cellar of a red squirrel. This is my story about how three different trees started to grow in the same place on the forest floor. You may have a different story about how this trio of trees originated; and if so, I would like to hear it.
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