This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I
heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men
sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to
watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left
when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary
majesty over the sproutland. I saw them like beavers or insects
gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with
their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it. It towered up a
hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest
probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a
little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and
the hills of Conantum. I watched closely to see when it begins to
move. Now the sawyers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the
side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. And now
their saw goes again. Now surely it is going; it is inclined one
quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken; it has not moved an inch; it stands at the
same angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its fall. Still
its branches wave in the wind, as if it were destined to stand for a
century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore; it is
still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over
Musketaquid. The silvery sheen of the sunlight is reflected from its
needles; it still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squirrel's
nest; not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like stem, its raking mast -
the hill is the hulk. Now, now's the moment! The manikins at its base
are fleeing from their crime. They have dropped the guilty saw and
axe. How slowly and majestically it starts! as if it were only swayed
by the summer breeze, and would return without a sigh to its location
in the air. And now it fans the hillside with its fall, and it lies
down to its bed in the valley, from which it is never to rise, as
softly as a feather, folding its green mantle about it like a warrior,
as if, tired of standing, it embraced the earth with silent joy,
returning its elements to the dust again. But hark! there you only
saw, but did not hear. There now comes up a deafening crash to these
rocks advertising you that even trees do not die without a groan. It
rushes to embrace the earth, and mingle its elements with the dust. And now all is still once more and forever, both to eye and ear.
I went down and measured it. It was about four
feet in diameter where it was sawed, about one hundred feet long. Before I had reached it the axemen had already divested it of its
branches. Its gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on the
hillside as if it had been made of glass and the tender cones of one
year' s growth upon its summit appealed in vain and too late to the
mercy of the chopper. Already he has measured it with his axe, and
marked off the millions it will make. And the apace it occupied in
the upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He
has laid waste the air. When the fish hawk in the spring revisits the
banks of the Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his
accustomed perch, and the hen-hawk will mourn for the pines lofty
enough to protect her brood. A plant which it has taken two centuries
to perfect, rising by slow stages into the heavens, has this
afternoon ceased to exist. It sapling top had expanded to this
January thaw as the forerunner of summers to come. Why does not the
village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled. I see no
procession of mourners in the streets, of the woodland aisles. The
squirrel has leaped to another tree; the hawk has circled further
off, and has now settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is
preparing to lay his axe to that also.
Wildlife
Research Institute
