Inside the Kingdom

INSIDE THE KINGDOM October 19, 2016 the Chronicle Section B – 20 Pages How a hurricane changed New England’s forests by Paul Lefebvre “The trees that were left standing had branches and limbs Thirty-Eight, The Hurricane blow off so they never ran sap like that Transformed New England, by they did previous,” the author writes, Stephen Long. Published 2016. quoting an East Corinth landowner. 249 pages. “It pretty near ruined it.” The impact of the storm on There’s a line in Stephen neighboring New Hampshire’s Long’s new book about the 1938 forestry industry resulted in a loss hurricane that will resonate among of a billion board feet of timber, those of us who were not alive whereas Vermont, with its richer when the storm struck the east soils that favor agriculture, lost coast on September 21, leaving a only a third as many trees. 90-mile swath of destruction from What remained foremost in the Long Island to the Quebec border. minds of those who lived through Long, one of the founders of the the hurricane was the sound: a Vermont magazine Northern sound that escalated into a roar. A Woodland, who subtitles his book sound so loud that it could block “The Hurricane that Transformed out the crash of a three-ton tree New England,” looks at both the being toppled. impact the storm had on the forest “With the roar from that wind, and how it affected people after it you couldn’t hear anything else, it had died down. was just a roar,” recalled a New “The roaring wind changed the Hampshire man who, as a young way people look at the natural boy in 1938, saw trees in his world,” writes Long, after telling us hometown topple like dominoes. that the hurricane of ’38 was only “My estimate was that 90 the third hurricane to ravage New percent of all the trees in Rindge England since Europeans settled over six inches in diameter got the area in 1635. blown down in ten minutes or so. Roughly 300 years later the Some of them broke off, but most of hurricane of ’38 had transformed them were uprooted,” he told Long into a place of reference for many of in 2011, adding the trees “came us living in the Northeast Kingdom down with a rush and a roar.” during the nineteen-fifties. When a As someone schooled more in hunter said he had gotten his deer history than forestry, I found Long up on the Hurricane, we knew he leading me painlessly into the meant that patch of woods east of science of how and why trees in Norton Pond and just off highway New England grow. Thirty-Eight 114 where the rising treetops had goes far beyond providing a colorful been snapped off. meteorologist who, as a native of imaginative solutions to save their narrative of what it felt like to A nearby brook running on the Puerto Rico, grew up in a country livestock. experience the hurricane of 1938 by backside of the pond or in Warren’s where hurricanes were common. One farmer along the showing how settlement patterns Gore was also named for the great “One can think of a mature Merrimack River, who was unable extending from Rhode Island to storm that Long tells us “brought hurricane as an engine converting to get his prize Holsteins out of Maine influenced the storm’s salt water to places that had never the heat energy provided by the harm’s way, saved the day by impact. To that end, the book is a tasted it.” ocean to the mechanical energy of herding them where Holsteins cautionary tale for owners of Reaching speeds ranging from the hurricane winds,” wrote seldom go. timberland to manage their woods 111 to 129 miles per hour, or what Lourdes Aviles, in her book Taken “The house was up higher, so for diversity. is known among meteorologists as by Storm, 1938. we put the cows in his house,” The forests of Connecticut and a Category Three hurricane, the Though the science of what recalled a neighbor who had lent a New Hampshire were among the winds were extremely strong but causes a hurricane requires close helping hand. “It spoiled the hardest hit of the six New England surprisingly erratic, causing reading, Long has the enviable house. It was a nice old house and states. Each had mature stands of damage that widely varied among knack of making the complex he had to go through it all after white pine that stemmed from a the forests of the area. accessible to his readers. After fixing it back up, but it saved the landscape that had been cleared In a chapter entitled “Disparate explaining the spotty nature of the cows.” first for farming and then allowed Destruction” Long writes, “if you hurricane’s damage to the woods, If rain and high water were the to go fallow as the economy became were to fly over New England in a he notes that a 1926 inventory hurricane’s initial calling card in more industrial. The forests slowly plane low enough to provide a good revealed that only 55 percent of Vermont, the wind — and the reclaimed the land, and white pine overview of the destruction on the Vermont’s forests held trees that damage it caused — was the more became the most dominant species. ground, you’d see a mosaic of exceeded three inches in diameter. everlasting impact of the storm. “Once it established itself in an damage, with many shades of gray To put that percentage into High winds flattened cornfields, opening with abundant sunlight, it between the extreme of flattened layman’s terms, he notes that’s ripped barns off their foundations, can outpace any other tree in the and untouched.” “akin to saying that someone with and devastated Vermont’s maple Northeast’s forests,” writes Long. Hurricanes require warm ocean a three-day stubble on his chin has sugaring industry. “White pine can routinely live two water and humid air to form, a beard.” Consequently, he In one bush, writes Long, a hundred years — unless, of course, conditions that become prevalent concludes, much of Vermont’s sugarmaker went from hanging it’s blown down by a hurricane.” as summer eases into fall. In the forest “wasn’t mature enough to 3,000 buckets to 600 in the spring And the hurricane of 1938 calendar year, August, September, blow down.” following the storm. A farmer with dramatically transformed New and October are hurricane’s prime High, rising water rather than a 40-acre sugarbush lost half his England because, of the 2.6 billion times. To describe a hurricane like wind initially caused farmers in trees and turned what trees board feet of timber it destroyed, 70 the one of ’38, Long quotes from a New Hampshire and Vermont to remained into a grove of skeletal percent, noted Long, was eastern book by a New Hampshire scurry and come up with ruins. white pine. IN THIS WEEKLY SECTION, YOU’LL FIND: BIRTHS l WEDDINGS/ENGAGEMENTS l OBITUARIES l KINGDOM CALENDAR l CLASSIFIED ADS l RESTAURANTS & ENTERTAINMENT l REAL ESTATE & AUCTIONS l YOURS FROM THE PERIMETER l RUMINATIONS l AND MORE! Page 2B the Chronicle, October 19, 2016 Ruminations Rhubarb isn’t just a spring thing by Elizabeth Trail In spite of the glorious fall colors, I feel a little forlorn when I look at my garden. We’ve had our hard frost. Most of the tender plants are withering. For the most part, it feels more like salvage than harvest these days — parsley and oregano to run through the food processor and freeze, a few apples left that the bugs haven’t gotten to. Over the weekend, I ripped out the nasturtiums, picking off the dozen or so leaves that hadn’t already gone limp from the frost. I dumped the rest of the vines on the compost pile. There’s not a lot to look forward to, except pulling leeks. But then there is rhubarb. Most of us think of rhubarb as a spring thing. After a cutting or two early in the growing season, we let the plants put up their bloom stalks, and then forget them for the rest of the season. And because rhubarb is such a natural for desserts, we tend to treat it as a fruit, rather than as the vegetable it actually is. Its old-fashioned name is even “pie plant.” My grandmother’s cousin Addie was the first person I ever heard use the expression “pie plant.” I was 14 and thought that was quaint. But it didn’t matter what Addie called it — her rhubarb pie remains in my memory as the Fall’s last rhubarb fills a basket, along with the last apples of the season. Photo by Elizabeth Trail best I’ve ever had. She made it in a big rectangular pan with a lattice top crust and When motorized grinders came along, they So I’m skeptical of the theory that rhubarb served it like cobbler, swimming in heavy cream. adapted their old hand-cranked grinder to run off needs a proper cut-down in the fall. The yard around Addie’s small white frame a motor built from bits and pieces of the many old But that advice gives me official permission to house in Wakenda, Missouri, overflowed with automobile engines to be found rusting away in harvest every stalk down to the ground at the end fruit. Besides a row of pie plants and a forest of people’s yards around town.

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