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Conservation Commission

Conservation and More

              by Bruce B. Beckley

Issue #92, September, 2000
As The Tree Grows

Thank You, Amherst Land Trust

A gift of 41 acres from the Amherst Land Trust will expand the Commission holdings in the Pulpit Brook area. The Trust, with money advanced to it by the voters two years ago purchased the former Huckabee farm, subdivided the house and four other lots out of the parcel and made this gift to the Town of the balance. This is an important addition to the Commission's portfolio as the ACC works to assemble land along a greenway stretching from Merrimack through the Bragdon Farm to Pulpit Rock Reservation in Bedford. The land will be protected forever by deed restrictions and an overlying conservation easement which will be held by the Trust.

As the Tree Grows

Souhegan West, 1725. The swamp was dark. Around its edge trees, large by any measure, shaded the area. In the swamp other trees, many of them hundreds of years old, rose from hummocks created when old giants toppled into the water decades or centuries earlier. Laurel, alder, blueberries and younger trees vied for the occasional shafts of sunlight that penetrated the canopy above.

Rarely did people go into the swamp. Even compared to other forests in those colonial times, this was an unfriendly spot. Here deer, lynx and bear were relatively safe from the occasional hunter, Indian or British, who might venture into this tangle of boulders, water and gum trees.

Into this environment 275 years ago seeds fell, dropping one hundred feet from a parent tree to land, some in the water, a few in the moist moss covering a half-submerged trunk felled in a summer storm generations earlier. The odds were against survival but the seed sprouted and took root, gaining support and nourishment from its predecessor. And as the tree struggled inch by inch to reach the light, a new nation struggled to set roots and grow.

Before the tree was barely knee high and hugging to life, the proprietors of Souhegan West were laying plans for settling veterans of the Indian fighting to the south. In 1735 the first settlers arrived in an area described by one as:

"A howling wilderness it was, where no man dwelt. The hideous yells of wolves, the shrieks of owls, the gobblings of turkeys, and the barking of foxes, was all the music we heard. All a dreary waste and exposed to a thousand difficulties."

In 1741 when the town-to-be counted 14 families and formed its first church, the forests were being cleared. Pile after pile of logs were mounded up and burned to produce ash from which potash was extracted. The nastiness of the swamp protected its denizens from the industrious settlers' axes. And the tree grew.

As the tree reached its first centennial, Amherst, which was chartered in 1760, had become the county seat. It was a time of road building and industrial endeavors. Routes for new roads were surveyed. None came close to the swamp but grist and saw mills were being started along Joe English Brook not far from where the tree was growing.

Pine and hemlock were being felled to feed the nearby mill and oaks were cut for the timbers needed for the many new homes, factories and barns down in the town which now counted 1625 inhabitants. The tree survived. The wood of the gum tree is not good for these uses, in fact, not good for too much at all. That quality and the surrounding barrier of the swamp buffered it from the growing demands for lumber.

New threats faced the tree as it reached its 150th birthday. It had now grown to a height that its crown was in the canopy and it had to fend for itself against the tortures of nature. In 1836 heavy frosts came early. A winter storm in 1839 washed out bridges in town and raised the water level in the swamp. At another time, hail the size of chicken eggs pelted the tree, shredded its leaves and twigs and broke 20,000 window lights around town. Forest fires burned nearby darkening the sky enough in 1881 to cause lamps to be lighted at noon.

With its top now broken and scarred, the tree lives on as the town still discusses taxes, schools, roads, new industries and growth. The tree and its swamp now find additional protection from the town's growth by virtue of being located in the ACC Joe English Reservation. As 275-year olds go, the tree is healthy and could still be growing and standing up to nature's threats for our great great grandchildren to wonder at. And when it falls, it will provide a foothold and food for some new upstart gum tree. When she can, that's the way Nature works.

Exciting and Imaginative

If I write anymore, I won't be asked back but I must say that the concept we heard presented by the Amherst School Board for the 4-5 school is exciting and it is imaginative. It sounds like a wonderful marriage of curriculum, site and structure in a unified environment. We hope it works out.

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