I recently had to have a birch tree removed from just outside my 115-year-old house in Maine. The foundation had shifted, causing the sewer pipes to partially collapse. The tree had to go so the old pipes could be excavated, and new ones installed.
On the day the work was scheduled, I drove up to my house – currently managed as a rental property – to get one last look at this favorite tree and to salvage perennials in the adjacent garden. I expected a person with a chainsaw to take care of the job, but instead, Dave arrived with a Kubota tractor and grapple. During the next hour, I watched with a mixture of awe and dismay as the grapple pulled and snapped the three main trunks and largest branches of my tree, tearing it apart, then carefully piled the remains for later removal.
The tractor then tugged at the base of the trunk, and astonishing lengths of roots emerged in short order. They put up a fight, and it was very clear to me why no tree should be planted so close to a foundation. When the work was done, the topsoil looked barely disturbed. It was as clean an extraction as one could hope for. Dave’s son had come along with a chainsaw and left me three birch logs to cut to length and burn in my fire pit. They loaded the rest of the tree parts – the scraggly top branches and tangled roots – into the back of a dump truck. I now had a very clean, empty space beside my house awaiting further excavation – and an improved view of a stretch of rapids in the Penobscot River that borders my neighbor’s yard.
Peter, the contractor handling the excavation and pipe replacement, had arrived midway through tree removal. As we watched Dave at work, we both commented on how much he appeared to love his work. He obviously took great care and pride in it.
I am a pragmatic person. I know trees are removed with all kinds of mechanical equipment in mass quantities to meet our demands for lumber, pulp, and other wood-based materials. Generally, though, I am distant from this activity, in spite of it being a frequent topic of this magazine. I enjoy stories focused on the traditional work of cutting trees with nothing more than a chainsaw, and work with horses to minimize soil impact. It isn’t rational, of course, to expect this kind of harvesting could meet our diverse economic demands. We need a mix of intensive, mechanical extraction and smaller scale, personalized approaches to logging to meet the wide range of market, acreage, and budget considerations existing in the Northeast. Compelling stories of being gentle on the land are interesting and appropriate, but they don’t reflect all the realities of what happens to get wood to our markets.
I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately with people who look at the world differently from how I do. Sometimes it’s an exercise in patience to simply listen to points that I disagree with rather than to react, but it’s important to get a deeper understanding of these different views. One friend, a tradesman, calls me a tree hugger, and I don’t object. I do occasionally hug trees, I sometimes speak to trees, and often listen to them while walking. I appreciate our scientific advances in understanding trees’ interactions with the habitats in which they grow, and I also understand why the term “forest bathing,” which I prefer to call a walk in the woods, is trending now. Yet the death and destruction of trees is part of the foundation of my everyday experience. I love my old wood floors and the farmer’s table where I enjoyed childhood meals and toiled over homework. I appreciate the paper products that I rely on, the wooden buildings where I work and live, and the firewood that warms me. The production of these materials over my lifetime more likely than not has involved a very mechanical end to a very great number of trees.
When I arrived at Northern Woodlands, I was keen to get into the field to meet and talk with people directly involved in forestry, logging, millwork, and other aspects of the forest industry. That was put off as we were all swept up in the pandemic. During the next 12 months, one of my priorities is to get out there in the world to meet more people doing this work across the Northeast, to learn from their experiences and whatever I may witness, to deepen what I can bring to this editorial role. I’m sure this will come with a mix of awe and respect – and occasionally dismay, as I experienced with this single birch tree removal at my home – and an even deeper appreciation for the forests on which we rely.