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| Lumberjacks stand beside old-growth chestnut trees in North Carolina around 1910. (Forest History Society, Durham, N.C.) |
“Imported on plant material in the late 19th century and
first discovered in 1904 in New York City, the blight—an Asiatic fungus to
which our native chestnuts had very little resistance—spread quickly. In its
wake it left only dead and dying stems. By 1950, except for the shrubby root
sprouts the species continually produces (and which also quickly become
infected), the keystone species that had covered 188 million acres of eastern
forests had disappeared.” —The American Chestnut Foundation
In
a region famous for its picturesque settings, Francis
Cove is exceptional, a rather largish bowl with an encircling ridgeline in
the mountains of Western North Carolina, about two miles from downtown
Waynesville. The cove faces more or less northeast and opens into a little
valley. In the nineteenth century, this area produced some of the largest
American chestnut trees ever recorded.
Except
for the high tannin content and the resulting rot resistance of the wood,
chestnut appears not to have been much valued as a timber species. It splits
too easily for framing uses, and it often grew with a twist, somewhat offset by
the fact that it might grow 100 feet before branches disturbed the trunk. This
made it possible to get very long, unblemished beams from chestnut.
Around
Waynesville, its chief value was for tannin extraction, and the Champion Paper
Company of my childhood was the Champion Chestnut Extract factory of my
father’s. Times change. The hill folk used to harvest the chestnut mostly for
the tannin, and they called it “acid wood.” It was the chief source of natural
tannin in the U.S. before the blight, and there was so much chestnut that many
of the extraction factories were able to continue operation into the 1960s
using standing dead stumps.
Somewhere I had
heard that the largest American chestnut on record was about twelve feet in
diameter. One day I repeated this bit of hearsay in a casual conversation with
someone at the American Chestnut Foundation
(the goal of the ACF is to develop a blight-resistant tree and restore the American
chestnut to its native range in eastern woodlands); one thing led to another,
and retired UNCA professor Dr. Garrett Smathers dug up an actual reference, a
tiny mention in Charlotte Hilton Green’s 1939 book Trees of the South. There she states, “Perhaps the largest of our
American chestnuts was one in Francis Cove, western North Carolina, which had a
diameter of seventeen feet and a height of more than one hundred feet.” Another
colleague found a similar reference
in a 1915 issue of American Forestry,
which stated that “a tree with a diameter of seventeen feet has been recorded
from Francis Cove in North Carolina.” Well, Garrett Smathers actually knew
where Francis Cove was, and recalled knowing someone who knew where the stump
of that old giant was. That’s how these things come about: threads of memory,
oral history, dim recollections, some persistence and curiosity sometimes lead
to the real thing. Thus began a pilgrimage in search of evidence of the perimeter of that tree. Garrett dug up some
names, including Gene Christopher, who was a relative of Garrett’s late friend
Mr. “Pink” Francis.
A Visit to Francis Cove
Francis
Cove has been populated with the Francis and Christopher families for quite
some time. In 1887, William Francis chose the site for a water-powered
gristmill, now on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, Francis Cove
is home to Christopher Farms, a small orchard that has been in family hands for
generations.
Gene
and Doug Christopher run not only the orchard but also a small retail produce
enterprise, a slightly modernized version of the old mountain stores, which you
can find today only in truly remote parts of Western North Carolina. The
Christopher Farms store sells real sourwood honey (not clover with a sourwood
label), a wide variety of apples, locally produced eggs, and 100 percent pure
maple syrup. (A poster above the shelf of maple syrup informs you that Aunt
Jemima syrup is 2 percent maple and the maple content of Log Cabin syrup is
zero.) One of the store’s niceties is that you can call up and someone will
take your order over the phone and box up the groceries so your granddaughter
can pick them up—as one young woman was doing I arrived at the store.
With me
was Dr. Paul Sisco, a geneticist for the American Chestnut Foundation
and a world expert on this species. Our
visit had a purpose other than getting us outside on a promising early spring
day. We were trying to install a small demonstration chestnut planting at the
Western North Carolina Nature Center in Asheville, forty minutes away, and we
thought it might be nice to give folks a concrete idea of the actual size of
these “redwoods of the East” by placing our kiosk in the center of a gravel pad
of the same dimensions as a cross-section of this arboreal monster.
When
we arrived, Gene (whom I had spoken to earlier on the phone) was off at jury
duty and brother Doug was manning the store. Doug managed to break away from
the busy phone long enough to walk us outside and point out where we should
look. Neither he nor his brother had been up to the site for maybe fifteen or
twenty years, and neither could promise that we would find anything. Doug
volunteered a couple of interesting items: There were actually two big trees,
the second nearly as large as the first; in the old days you could turn a cart
around inside the larger tree. After giving us directions, Doug returned to the
phone, and Paul and I were on our own.
Up
through the woods we went. I was carrying an arsenal of camera hardware,
including a digital camera and a camcorder, a vial for collection of chestnut
debris for carbon-14 dating, orange flags to mark the perimeter for
photographing, rope, a ruler, just the basics. Paul had about the same amount.
Optimists. We stopped in the area where Doug had indicated we would find the
first stump and began looking around.
As
a woodcarver, I have found that chestnut has two distinct features. One is its
slight baby-aspirin tint, coming from the tannins that preserve it. The other
is its ease of carving, particularly when one is carving contours. As a rough
field test, I use my pocketknife to shave through the exterior rot of a fallen
limb, scrape down to solid wood, and then carve a curved cup. If it is “easy
enough” and it is orange, it’s a safe bet it’s chestnut. Since these hills used
to be covered with the stuff, it’s a pretty safe bet anyway.
Paul
and I spent twenty minutes walking around the first site. The earth under our
feet had that unmistakable feel of a springy mattress stuffed with centuries of
humus, penetrated with the bones of dead trees and stumps—some of them chestnut
but none of them large. Trickling invisible water . . . mushy, muddy places
where seeps emerged out of sudden dips in the slope . . . wildflowers. Our
exploration yielded some briar cuts, a warning from a neighborhood brace of
watchdogs, and not much else. Halfway through the first site visit, I returned
most of my data-collecting gear to the car.
The Second Site
The
second site was at the top of the abandoned orchard. It had a lot of fallen
timber. In the right places, chestnut has the look of driftwood, but here it
looked more brown on the exterior. Doug had volunteered a few comments about
the out-of-towner who had come up several years ago, planted the orchard
between where the two trees once stood, then disappeared, leaving acres of
untended trees right next to the impeccably maintained orchards of Christopher
farms. The fellow had also overseen the obliteration of the entire mountainside
of its timber. “Made his million and went back to Florida” was Doug’s comment
on the subject.
Paul
and I spent another half hour wandering in ever widening circles. The spring
ground, even in late March, was beginning to sprout a lot of wildflowers. I
felt guilty stepping on the bloodroot, trout lilies, wood anemones, and
squirrel corn, and was truly surprised that they were out in such early
abundance. I normally don’t even look until late April or early May.
Much
of the fallen timber turned out to be chestnut, based on my little field test,
but we were unable to locate the stump of the old giant. There was a lot of
water and moisture on this side of the mountain, perhaps accounting for faster
rot (and poorer fortunes for two amateur giant hunters) as well as for the size
of these huge trees.
Nor
were we able to find chestnut sprouts. The leaves were not out yet, but you can
still usually identify them. Paul had heard that where you find chestnuts
easily today is in places where they grew most poorly in the past. That’s
because many trees have problems growing in those places. But where they
formerly grew best, any tree can grow, and the niche of the chestnut was
quickly filled with other species. In fact, some biologists say that the best
thing ever to happen to biodiversity in our mountains was chestnut blight, since
the more commercially valuable oaks, poplars, and hickory colonized the empty
chestnut stands. (These biologists don’t get invited to my house for dinner
much!)
Vanishing Traces
We
went back down to report to Doug that we had found nothing and were fortunate
to run into Gene, who had just gotten off jury duty. He took a few minutes to
run us back up the hill and point out exactly where the tree had been. We had
been looking about 100 yards too far to the left, and he pointed out the little
rise and the flat upon which he recollected the stump had been. Gene said that
the big tree had yielded twelve to fourteen chords of acid wood, or about 1,800
cubic feet. His grandfather and father had harvested it around the turn of the
century.
He
also said that the forest we were looking at had already been cut twice in his
lifetime (he was about sixty years old) and that it was within twenty years of
another harvest. That would mean one heck of a lot of productivity for this
site, and might explain why the biggest chestnuts were found here.
Gene
drove back down the hill to the busy store, and Paul and I trudged through the
woods to the designated place, but we were unable to find even a hint of the
big tree—which is pretty much what one would expect when a tree has been gone
for 100 years. It’s a miracle that there was any crumb left fifteen years ago
when Gene recalled last seeing it.
We
just don’t find big chestnuts stumps any more. Even the biggest stumps can’t
last forever. But at least we did get to the site. The earth that supported
these big trees remains intact, no matter how many “foreigners” mow it down
from time to time. It can support the chestnut again. All that’s missing in the
equation is the chestnut, and we’re working on that. I’m planning a visit back
there in 700 years to see the replacement trees. Paul, unfortunately, will be
too old by then to go with me. But I’ll take some pictures for him.
And
the site did yield something for me: a rusted lucky horseshoe, complete with a
nail or two. Maybe off a horse and cart that used to turn around in the old
stump? I’d like to think that, anyway.
Forrest MacGregor is an
engineer, inventor, and artist who hails originally from the mountains of
Western North Carolina. He currently lives in Randolph, Vermont. Much of his
art and writing explores modern man’s relationship to technology.
