A 3,000-Year-Old Voyage Of Discovery (Scotland)

Scotsman ^ | 8-1-2006 | Jennifer Veitch

[DavemeisterP]

Central Texas used to be the same way. The Eastern Cross Timbers ended here in Waco, and the local natives at a Wichita(spelling wrong) village named Quiscat from around 1782 used to float pine trees down Aquila Creek to the Brazos River to work them into boats for trade purposes. The only pine trees you see within 60 miles of here now are ones germinated by people in the last 50 years.

The early 1900's and especially the Great Depression took it's toll on the local tree population, as they were cut down for firewood and building material, or just burned for the purpose of land clearing. People visit the area around Waco and think that it has always been flat and full of mesquite trees, but it used to be a dense forest of oaks, pine, and those tall straight cedars that you see mainly in the lower mountains of North Carolina now. There are a few old-growth patches of oak trees with giant canopies of grapevines that you can still walk across,(60ft. in the air) for a mile or so. When you look at them and imagine what it looked like around here 150 years ago, it makes you wonder how explorers or even any wagon trains ever made it through here.

Texas isn't desolate, people made it seem that way. As far as the mesquites that we seem to be known for, the majority of them are one or two species that have traveled here from Mexico in the last 150 years following the removal of the local tree population. Those are like a weed, you can't kill them and they smother everything else. The previous species of mesquites had to deal with growing tall to receive any sun at all.

One of the coolest trees I've ever seen was a black mesquite that was taller than any pecan or live oak tree around it. It had black sap running all down the trunk and thorns on it from top to base that were around a foot long with thorns several inches long coming off of those. It looked to be about 100 ft. tall, maybe more. I think it could have been the state record, but was buried way off in the woods where I was wheedling at and I doubt anyone has ever seen it or realized what they were actually looking at. It kept anything from growing under it for some reason and had been there long enough to build up a layer of long thorns on the ground under it's canopy that was very dangerous to walk around on. If anyone knows what the actual name of this rare tree was, write me back. I've never seen another and I've been in the woods all of my life.

[RightWhale]

The Greeks of the time of Homer and Hesiod were somewhat proud of the new ship building technique involving thwarts and planks and curved hulls since it allowed much bigger and faster ships. Noah, of course, built of timbers (no mention of thwarts,) and sealed with pitch, probably bitumen, placing his home somewhere in an oily region such as California, Texas, Alaska, or Iraq. Hollowing out a log can be challenging and an amount of technology could be involved.

[To Hell With Poverty]

Conversely, New Hampshire used to be pretty much totally defoliated, farmland as far as the eye could see. Mostly pines, too. Then when the Industrial Revolution came everyone abandoned their farms (the soil is pretty poor and rocky up there anyway) and moved to the cities, and the land changed into the gorgeous diciduous forests now famous for fall leaf peeping! It's pretty cool, you can walk waaaaaaayyyyy back into the woods and there will always be these random stone walls crisscrossing the land.

[rochester_veteran]

Conversely, New Hampshire used to be pretty much totally defoliated...

Same goes for the Adirondack Mountains in Northern New York State. Logging and mining (iron ore) caused most of the deforestation. It wasn't until the late 1800's that state legislation was passed to preserve the forests in the mountains and make them forever wild.

[To Hell With Poverty]

Glad to know the trees came back, but I like my story better (yay free markets!)...
; )

Actually, I did see a program about that on PBS once, a special about the Hudson River valley. Demand for firewood had a lot to do with it if I remember correctly. I think about that (the deforested Adirondacks) whenever I hear hippies talking about their wood stoves like it's so darn superior to our oil furnaces. I'd rather burn oil and keep our forests, thank you! (well okay actually I'd rather have cheap nuke power, but you get my point.....)

[afraidfortherepublic]

Same with Wisconsin. Those German farmers did a good job of clearing to turn it all into fields.

[afraidfortherepublic]

...it used to be a dense forest of oaks, pine, and those tall straight cedars...

Indeed! Although there is still enough pine pollen floating around to interfere with my daughter's voice when she was studying music at Baylor U! She had to take allergy shots for it! LOL.

[AFreeBird]

And judging from my back yard (I live on about 3 acres), if left alone, no farming, no cutting of lawns and no more buildiing of parking lots and roads, I suspect in a hundred years are so, we'd have pretty dense forrests growing here again.

I put weed killer on my lawn of course, but it don't kill the woody plants, honeysuckle (a damn weed), oak, maple, poplar and numerous other species that are constantly popping up in my yard. If I quit cutting my grass, trees would take over in 5 years, actually less if you count the honeysuckle. My chipper/vac gets more use than my lawnmower.

[DavemeisterP]

Probably was the mountain cedar blowing out of the SW from Fort Hood. I've seen the pollen swirl across the road like a purple fog at some times of the year down around there.

[afraidfortherepublic]

The doctor identified it as an allergy to pine pollen, although who knows! It would just steal her voice at inopportune times. Since she was a voice major, it interfered with her education! Spent a lot of money on allergy shots.

[SunkenCiv]

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