A Pocket of Precious
Old growth forest in New England is rare. The region was settled by Europeans far earlier than many parts of the rest of what would become the United States. Those early settlers and their descendants essentially cut over virtually every acre of forest within 200 or so years. By the early 19th Century southern New England especially was a vast patchwork of small farms with comparatively few trees.
But some pockets of old forest escaped the axe and saws, often because it was simply too hard to get at the trees because of difficult terrain. Many of these were determined to be true old-growth only in recent years. Emerging science increasingly finds that old growth, or ancient forests, as they also are known, are especially ecologically significant, far more biologically rich than, say, a young forest of planted trees.
One of those venerable pockets remains in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in the Berkshire hills in the western part of the state. It is called Ice Glen, a steep-sided ravine containing massive boulders left by the last ice age - and enormous ancient trees, many of them 300 or more years old, including hemlocks and white pines.
On a recent day, an old friend, editor and colleague from our days at The Hartford Courant, Bernie Davidow, joined me to hike the short but, in places, slightly difficult trail through Ice Glen, now a protected preserve owned by the town of Stockbridge, the trail maintained by the Laurel Hill Association, founded in 1853.
The Ice Glen Trail is only about .7 of a mile long, and the glen itself only 25 acres. But it is a glorious, tiny world unto itself. The towering old trees shade the ravine and the boulders, keeping the glen cool enough that ice can linger in sheltered places into the summer, hence its name. Mosses blanket old fallen trees, ferns grow on crevaces in rock ravine walls. Boulders are often slippery with dampness.
We hiked carefully through the boulders. I found myself using my hands to work myself over or around rocks. In places, the going is slow. Be careful, I warned myself.
Bernie and I worked our way through the ravine, marveling at this precious relic of habitat, arriving at the south end, where there is an enormous old white pine that some people think is the biggest known white pine in Massachusetts. It is thought to be over 160 feet high and, typical of many old growth trees, it has no branches and foliage from the ground level almost to the top of the tree. Think of this as the tree equivalent of a lollypop.
Actually, it was determined at least 8 years ago that at least one other pine in Berkshire County is bigger, a pine over 170 feet high in Mohawk Trail State Forest, studied by Bob Leverett, the guru of ancient forest research in the Northeast, who also has measured the Ice Glen behemoth.
We took a circuitous route back to the trailhead where a scenic memorial arch and wooden footbridge over the Housatonic River welcome you to the Ice Glen Trail and two others. We took advantage of a park bench, and the shade of big old trees, and had an outdoor lunch, the Housatonic gurgling beside us.
Access to the north end of the Ice Glen Trail is this memorial footbridge over the Housatonic River in Stockbridge, MA. Click to enlarge.
Bernie Davidow amid the massive boulders in the Ice Glen preserve, a charming relic of Ancient forest in the Massachusetts Berkshire range. Click to enlarge.
Etched in a lichen and moss covered boulder beside the Ice Glen Trail is this commemorative message: Ice Glen, The Gift to Stockbridge of David Dudley Field, 1891. Click to enlarge.
At the south end of the Ice Glen Trail is this massive white pine, more than 300 years old and towering some 160 feet above the trail. As with many very old trees, the only limbs with any foliage are confined to the very uppermost part of the trunk. Click to enlarge.