Tucked away in drawers of antiquity, or hidden in Historical Society’s files or maybe on the Bank’s calendars are photographs from over a hundred years ago. While many are interesting from a historical point of view, others are fascinating because inadvertently they show the state of the surrounding environment---or what was left of it.
Mostly, we marvel at old photographs showing various activities of farming, seriously posing baseball teams, dandy community parades and small town participants hoisting a pint at the local saloon. Of course, the tendency is to focus on the human activities without taking notice that the back ground setting is frequently treeless. There were no trees. It seems that by 1900 or so almost all of the trees in this area had been cut down either for fuel, lumber or to clear the land for farming.
Each time I see these treeless landscapes it makes me wonder what it was really like prior to white man’s arrival, say, when the only human occupation was that of the Native Americans. It is not too difficult to find out, either from much earlier photographs, historical records or interestingly, from pollen analysis. It would appear, this particular area was fairly heavily forested with some settings of Oak openings and tall grass prairies. The forests were deciduous, composed of oaks, maples and other hardwoods. To the north progressively there were more and more coniferous forests intermixed with the hardwoods.
While it may seem the white men were the only inhabitants to alter the local landscape, it is also true the native Americans were also manipulating it with the use of fire. Of course, nature itself provides plenty of fire with lightening strikes. The point is, prior to our arrival, the local landscape was noticeably different than it was in 1880 to 1900 when most of the photos were taken. There were more trees and more tall grass prairies and no cultivation to speak of.
With the arrival of farming and logging, the landscape shifted to what the old photographs clearly demonstrate. The land was simply barren of what was once the natural environment. Every inch of land was being used to farm with only a few remaining woodlots and almost no prairies.
I also know from my own father’s stories that in his youthful years there were almost no whitetail deer remaining in the area as they simply ran out of habitat, implying that with the loss of the natural vegetation the animal life also went the way of the wolf---mostly gone.
Most interestingly, at the same time one looks at the photographs noting the disappearance of the natural world, it becomes obvious the barren landscapes of 1900 are now tree-filled and lush with vegetation. In other words, at some point in time the act of clearing every inch of land, and cutting every tree came to a halt. Thinking back to my own childhood, I remember fields of crops on almost every square inch along the rivers and lakes I traveled. Now many of those fields have been abandoned and are filled with fifty-year old trees of many species. Starting in the thirties, I suspect, many of the poorer farms began to fail and the land was left to fend for itself.
I remember also that many dairyman would turn their cattle loose on the land that was not suitable for tilling. While this terrain was not farmable, it could provide meager forage for cattle and in the process virtually every native plant was either eaten or trampled. At some point this woodland grazing was ended and the few remaining forests were given an opportunity to begin the long process of recovery. The point being, there is now a change going on, slow as it may be, of a recovery in the natural environment possibly moving back to a time prior to our arrival.
The story seems to say that due in part to the failure of some of human activities, for example marginal farming and logging, the natural world is creeping back in some locales. It has always been fascinating to walk though a fairly old forest and find miles of old stone fences that clearly once were containment for cattle and plowed fields. On some of the ground I now hunt, one would think this was a wild place, almost never touched by man but the telltale fences are everywhere. The kicker came when I saw a 75 year old photo of the same farm completely void of all trees---and most everything else.
In the portion of the farm where there are two-hundred year old oaks, to this day there are no spring ephemerals, and very few of the native flowers that were once in abundance in what probably was an oak opening. The reason being over fifty years ago this forest was still being grazed. In that fifty years it has still not recovered---and it might take another hundred to do so. Interestingly, in the ditches surrounding the farm, some of the native plants are beginning to thrive having never been subjected to grazing.
The point of this conversation is to make note of how our environment has changed due to shifting aspects of human behavior. Farming, and logging, have in some areas simply failed to be productive and the plants and fauna of old have crept back in giving us a richer environment filled with a greater population of deer, turkeys and a multitude of wild plants. Obviously, this is not happening everywhere but here and there we see Trilliums, Big Blue Stem Grass, Switch grass, Blood Root, Cup Plants and many more. Fortunately, the devastation that was committed in this country was only done for one hundred years and here and there remnants remained which could be used for reintroduction---unlike many places in the world where thousands of years of aggressive abuse and overpopulation of humans have completely removed the entire natural world. We are fortunate.
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