Maloof - Among the Ancients : Adventures in the Eastern Old-Growth Forests

Ramseys Draft, Virginia

First edition published 2011 by Ruka Press, PO Box 1409, Washington, DC 20013 2011 Joan Maloof. All rights reserved.

All photographs used in the book are by Joan and Rick Maloof, except those for Virginia, which are by David McDaniel. Used by permission.

The map data is from OpenStreetMap and copyright OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

See: http://www.openstreetmap.com and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0.

The tree illustrations used on the map pages are by USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. Copyright free.

Directions to the parks are by the author and are offered without warranty. Travel data, such as park hours and access, were accurate at the time of the authors visits but are subject to change. Contact the author at www.amongtheancients.com.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010942749

ISBN 978-0-9830111-0-1

Design by Sensical Design & Communication

For everyone who has had the experience of being in an old-growth forest, and especially for those who have shared these trails with me.

She was no longer that woman with blue eyes
who once had echoed through the poets poems,
no longer the wide couchs scent and island,
nor yonder mans possession any longer.

She was already loosened like long hair,
and given far and wide like fallen rain,
shared like a limitless supply.

She was already root.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I wrote a small book about trees. One of the chapters in that book described visiting an old-growth forest in Maryland. The book was well received, and I got many heartfelt e-mails and letters, but nearly all of my readers wanted to know the same thing: how to get to that old-growth forest.

I knew how they felt because it had taken me, too, a long time to find directions to an old-growth forest in the East. For many years I didnt even bother asking for directions, because when I inquired about ancient, uncut forests in the East I was told there were none left. Like many other tree lovers, I visited the redwood and the sequoia groves in the West, and although they were a wondrous consolation, they were not an image of what my home ground ever was, or could be.

I had read the accounts written by early explorers describing the majestic and diverse eastern forests stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. I had seen the photographs of the unbelievably large white oaks, bald cypress, longleaf pines, tulip poplars, and hemlocksmost of them taken either just before or just after the trees were cut. I longed to experience what the eastern forest was like in its original state.

Not until the 1990s did the first stories of eastern old growth reach me. In that decade, a dedicated group of forest lovers started publishing their findings: there was old growth in the East. Although the estimates of how much were depressingly lowless than one half of one percent of the great eastern forest was still old growththe fact that it existed at all brought joy to my heart. The remaining fragments were scattered far and wide, but they existed, and I could see them.

Most residents of the eastern United States never get to see an old-growth forest. They think perhaps the forests are too far away, or they lack directions. Like the forests, the directions are scattered far and wide.

In order to write this book, I visited one old-growth forest in each state east of the Mississippi Rivertwenty-six states in all. The forests are all open to the public, and in these pages I tell you how to get there and what you will find when you arrive. Some of the forests are pristine; some are in distress. Some are an easy drive, others a difficult hike or paddle. Some are vast; others cover just a few acres. I hope the book will be an enjoyable adventure even if you never leave your couch. But if, like my earlier readers, you are eager to experience the ancients for yourself, this book can guide you to them.

If you have read this far and you are still not sure what an old-growth forest is, there is no need to be ashamed. It is a difficult concept to pin down, and I would wager that more tree fiber has already been used to print various definitions of old growth than currently exists in old-growth forests in the East. There is no single definition for it. When someone at the United Nations Forestry Division went looking for definitions, he found ninety-eight of them. So we wont get involved in that debate.

For our purposes, we will be content with the notion that old-growth forests are places that have been left alone for a very long time. This usually results in large, old trees, but in some marginal environments, such as mountaintops, even the ancient trees are small. When forests are left alone, the natural cycles of life and death are easy to witness. The structure of a forest changes with age, and as the structure of an ancient forest develops, the plant and animal communities become more diverse and complex. Even the soil changes as a forest ages. The reason definitions are so difficult is that every forest is different.

We will have to see for ourselves what old growth really is. On our journey, we will see numerous examples of old-growth attributes. We are going to the forests with the biggest trees we can find, and we are going to experience how full of life they are. But we are also going to look at the forests from the human perspective. We will discover who had the dream, who drew the line, who said no to the loggers.

Although state boundaries are human-made political divisions and do not closely reflect the various forest bioregions, I have organized the book by state to show that, no matter where you live in the East, there is an old-growth forest you can reach in a day. These are not excursions to the trackless wilderness; these are places almost anyone can go.

These are true stories. You may use them individually, as guides for places youd like to visit, or take the whole journey with me from beginning to end. The astute reader will note that, as a result of organizing the chapters geographically, they are not in the order in which I visited the forests. If you would like to know the dates of my visits, I have included them in the reference notes, along with the Latin names of the species I discuss.

Some might wonder why I would want to share these places, why I would want to make it easier to find them. Besides the human instinct to share the best the world has to offer, I believe that, as more of us visit these places, more of us will understand what our landscape used to be, and more of us will make the effort to protect the ancient forests that remain. I want to see even more people out there on the shady paths, so more voices will speak out for the trees and the creatures that live among them.