Crow’s Nest: Tree history

By Daniel Barringer, Preserve Manager.

I’ve said many times that I prefer trees alive instead of cut, but sometimes we have to take down hazard trees along roadsides or near buildings or wires. When I have to do that I try to count the rings as a way of showing respect for the tree. This spruce tree which died and had to be cut down was planted, by my calculation, right after the end of World War II. I think it might have been planted as an emblem of hope for the new age that was dawning. It reached a good size and age before succumbing and needed to be removed.

Some of these trees are offered to neighbors as firewood. Others instead are left to rot in the woods, sequestering their carbon for as long as possible and returning their nutrients to the woods to foster the next generation of trees. A few are set aside for milling, such as this walnut that Luke DiBerardinis is working on (below). He made a couple beautiful benches out of the slabs, so you may be seeing these Crow’s Nest trees again as benches on several Natural Lands preserves.