Back in the 1890s, some loggers were felling virgin forests north of Grayling, Michigan. As the 1890s were well past the peak of the Michigan logging boom, this couldn’t have been the choice patch of forest for lumber in the first place. Then disaster struck in the form a stock market crash and the company in charge of the logging operation decided the work wasn’t worth continuing. So they left a small patch of forest less than 100 acres. Later no one decided this small patch was worth coming back to and it remained until at some point the land was donated to the state and people realized that it was one of the most significant stands of old growth forest still remaining in the state of Michigan. Hartwick Pines State Park may have started as a bunch of leftover trees, but today this small forest may be beyond value.

I don’t like visiting Hartwick Pines that much, because there’s so many people. But if you can filter them out of your mind’s eye, you will find something special—eastern hemlock. I don’t remember seeing these anywhere else, and it’s a goal of mine to change this embarrassment. You’ll also see the ubiquitous white pine, but in giant varieties. Intermixed with these conifers you’ll see struggling beech trees. Beech trees were once common. My viewpoint may be oversimplified, but I view oak trees as serving a similar purpose to beech trees. Both bear hard mast (nuts) which feed wildlife. Both retain dead leaves into the spring providing the same wildlife a hiding place. When Northern Michigan was logged off, much of it was colonized by oak trees from further south. Then disease killed off remaining beech trees. I still see beech trees, but sometimes I also look at oak trees and wonder if they should be a beech or even an eastern hemlock.

The history of Hartwick Pines reminds me of a tale concerning two Michigan counties. The first, Lenawee County, I was raised in. Lenawee County borders Ohio with modern travel times about two hours to the southwest of Detroit. The main ‘battle’ of the bloodless ‘Toledo War’ was fought a few miles from where I grew up at the Ohio border. When Michigan was first settled in haste about a decade following the War of 1812, land in Lenawee County was highly desired with many fertile forest openings perfect to homestead and settlers flooded in. Today, Lenawee county is mostly private farmland and hardwood woodlots and the only significant public recreation land is about three thousand acres around swampy Hudson Lake.

Conversely, Oscoda County wasn’t settled in earnest until the late 1870s and early 1880s. To put this into perspective, by the time Oscoda County was settled the Oregon Trail was decades in the past and the California gold rush a distant memory. Little Bighorn was fought and over. Wild Bill Hickok was dead and Wyatt Earp walked the streets of Tombstone, Arizona. Nobody was in a big hurry to move to Oscoda County, Michigan. The desperate settlers who moved there found sand that drains rain water so fast that the soil is sometimes compared to desert. Many homesteads struggled from the beginning. The Great Depression and mechanized agriculture in the first half of the 20^th century claimed most that remained. Lands were abandoned into government control. Oscoda County is about the least densely populated county in the Lower Peninsula, less than half the population density of the least densely populated county in all of Ohio (Monroe). Today, Oscoda County is 80% forested and over half public land.

It wasn’t just Oscoda County, Michigan that ended up in government hands. Early American settlers found natural resources so vast that few imagined they would ever be exhausted. But soon great forests were felled, prairies fenced and plowed under, and the rivers polluted. Once unfathomable populations of beaver, bison, grizzly, and passenger pigeon were going or gone. For a while, it seemed that only the wiliest of critters like the white tailed deer, black bear, elk, and grouse would survive and only then by fleeing into places so gnarly and wild that humans were rarely bothered enough to follow. But these remote mountains, forests, and swamps soon caught the attention of one group of people, conservationists. At behest of the conservationist movement, these unwanted, abandoned, and failed parcels transferred into federal and state ownership. From tiny lots to vast expanses, we formed our state and national parks, lands, and forests.

So today it seems we’ve reevaluated our priorities. This is never so clear as when I stumble across an abandoned foundation, graveyard, or walk down a two track that was a farm-lane long past. Most of these places are either overcome with trees or the encroaching trees are only held back by yearly human effort. In many of these places, man fought the forest and the forest won. Then I also see modern humans recreating all over the land. Wide-eyed school children on summer break bike from campground to campground. I find recent memorial markers placed on the cherished trails and clearings of deceased loved ones. Lakes and rivers are still clear. The marks of ancient glaciers pocket the landscape and complete the golden lining of the mistakes, limits, and failures of our past.