McCarthy's fifty-acre bushlot had not been timbered since the 1890's and beech, maple and hemlock had grown to a fine size. The undergrowth consisted mainly of attenuated beech seedlings that were being choked out for want of light while along the fringes by the farm road grew a ragtag assortment of alder and choke-cherry. Throughout the mixed stand of hardwood there was also a smattering of black cherry and silver and yellow birch, all grown to a fair size. Cedars grouped together in a wet piece of bottomland along with several tall poplars. The bushlot adjoined another fifty acres that had been left in much the same state except the owner occasionally sold maple and beech for firewood. Old McCarthy cut birch and windfalls, and then only as needed, for his kitchen stove.

  Walking these woods with him was always a nice experience. He was still bright-eyed and spry at eighty-four and his Irish humour, though quick and clever, often had a bawdy twist that would take the more cultivated city dweller by surprise. In springtime his woods would ring with the pure bell-notes of the Baltimore oriole, while in late fall, the skirl of a Red-tailed hawk would sound at the approach of an intruder. Though "No Hunting" notices were prominently displayed, grouse and deer were sometimes taken by poachers.

  But it was the ancient blackened stumps protruding from the rich soil of the bushlot that fascinated me. Trees often grew from their centres, or a mass of trailing arbutus would cover one, reducing it to a glorious, scented mound in spring. To reduce one of these stumps to a pile of red mould, was like committing sacrilege for they were markers of the death of the original forest that consisted almost exclusively of white pines. Before the coming of settlers, this forest covered thousands of square miles.

  Old McCarthy remembered his father felling these trees when he was a boy. His two barns were built from timbers cut in these woods, these squared with a broad axe then morticed and held together with wooden pegs, their exteriors sheathed with boards measuring up to four foot wide that kept them tight against the weather.

  However, it was the incredible size of the stumps that had me wondering for no one would ever see white pine of these dimensions again. I certainly would not, not if I lived for another four hundred years. I could hardly imagine the present forest of mixed species finally succumbing to a climax growth of white pines for there were few of these anywhere in the woods, yet, inevitably, the white pines would someday predominate and become the natural successors.

  Several years later, long after I had seen Old McCarthy laid to rest, I skied alone one snowy day, down one of his wood-land trails and slid off into a corner, down a natural avenue between leafless trees where a stand of cedars loomed ahead through the murk. A covey of spruce grouse startled me in a sudden explosion of wings. They had lain hidden beneath a drift in front of me where I had to stop and stare after them, the surprise still with me. No wind reached these inner recesses so the peace was perfect and I took time to look about me. Beyond and above the cedar grove loomed the broken limbs of a dead giant that for years had escaped my notice. For a moment I wondered if it was just the smother of falling snow that lent this tree such huge dimensions so I circled the cedars and closed in to see it firsthand.

  I could tell by the remaining patches of rough bark that it was a white pine, probably the only one left of the original forest. Standing at about thirty feet in height, with a width at my chest of between four and five feet, it gave me some idea of the size of those ancient trees. A huge piece of rough bark hung loose on its side which I pulled away in a cascade of red dust. Beetles and ants and woodpeckers were still doing to it what time itself seemed unable to achieve, its destruction incredibly slow considering how long ago it had died. Perhaps fifty years had passed since old age stopped its sap but it still stood, almost like a creature asleep. A welter of broken limbs protruded from the snow beneath and looking up its trunk I could see the great rectangular holes left by Pileated wood-peckers and the smaller round ones, left by other species.

  I skied out mulling over my memories of the old man, imagining him as a boy helping his father in that hopelessly beautiful forest of long ago.