DOWN EAST magazine • October 2021
The Maine woods have not been treated gently these past 400 years. By the late 1800s, a survey commissioned by the federal government concluded that high-value trees — mature white pines and their nearest substitute, red spruces — were gone from Maine, with scant exception. by some combination of whim and accident, a very little bit indeed remained intact. Of some 18 million acres of Maine forest, only 10,000 are known to have evaded ax and saw — one half of one tenth of a percent. Most such examples of old growth are scattered about in small stands, a disparate collection of isolated anachronisms. Improbably, though, half of Maine’s remaining old growth resides in one uninterrupted block of 5,000 acres, hidden in plain sight in the middle of the north woods, around Big Reed Pond.