What a difference a century makes

 What a difference a century makes

First, please look at this photo taken recently on the Cumberland Plateau in east Tennessee, USA.

Recently a Hemlock tree my ancestors transplanted from the local woods around a century ago grew up and then began to die. We used a backhoe to cut some roots and push it over away from the cottage it was growing by. We’ll sell the log for floor boarding (I hope). The backhoe also helped push most of the Hemlocks “trash” and debris into the local forest to rot. Hemlocks makes poor firewood (like poor heat content) with lots of creosote most want to avoid.

Now I was not alive a century ago, so most of what follows is my conjecture.

1)      The natural woods are encroaching again.

2)      Most land then was in agriculture, grazing land for animals (probably mostly cattle), or even in orchard land near the Compound I presently live in.

3)      The land on top of the Cumberland Plateau was naturally burned by lightning, and also human burned by the Indians.  Fires kill hardwood trees and promote many pine trees is a general rule. Today’s quail plantations routinely use this rule.

4)      The local “Hollows” generally did not burn nearly as well. One can even propose they are now microcosms of much more primitive times, like even “Ice Age” times.

5)      The open land then (as late as circa 1800) was often used for grazing in prairie land by local elk and even the now extinct eastern buffalo, also called Woodland Buffalo and other names. Yep, we even had native buffalo around Washington, D.C. at one time.

6)      Most of the present wildlife we hunt and eat were reintroduced. So the present deer, turkey, and even now black bear are relatively new as we killed and ate the old ones that were here when the original European settlers arrived.

7)      One can say “playing God with ecosystems” is a tough business.

8)      Coyotes (and even armadillos) are relatively new east of the Mississippi River. Even Lewis & Clark had to go west of the Mississippi River to discover coyotes during their time in the new world USA (again circa 1800).

9)      I now better understand why we used so much wood in the construction of our homes, woods steps (in my case), and even castles. Mostly it was an asset we had, and used. That it was probably not “treated” with insecticide stuff is probably a given in many cases. Even years ago I dug in two tetherball poles, one made from maple and one made from locust. Locust is much more resistant to rot, and it still exists for the game. The maple tree pole long ago rotted and fell over.

10)  The “style” of the cottages was called “California bungalow” a century ago.

11)  The cottages were wood, generally “chestnut” wood, which is a superior type of wood. Our American forests were changed forever by the Chestnut Blight introduced from China into New York City circa 1910. For those who think the Exxon Valdese or the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt are pretty bad to we humans, well the
Chestnut Blight was pretty bad, too. One does not hear much about Chestnuts roasting by an open fire these days, is one example.

12)  Even one Compound cottage has a ten foot ceiling, and the other has a twelve foot ceiling.  The idea then was to enhance the then warm season air conditioning for humans, where the heat went up high while we humans lived in the cooler air down below. Most enclosed places these days with forced air heat and air conditioning have eight foot ceilings, by the way.

13)  I remember one “talk” about when community was a bigger deal than it is today. For example, without refrigeration, a community shared a local deer kill before the meat went bad.

And all this conjecture and thoughts are from one photo.