Joyce Kilmer was an American poet, writer, and soldier; born in New Jersey in 1888. He lived and worked in New York and New Jersey and was killed In World War I in France in 1918. He was quite well known in his time; today he is primarily remembered for the single poem Trees:
Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
A bit sappy perhaps (sorry), but it is still remembered and has been memorized by generations of American schoolchildren. Joyce Kilmer was considered a great hero. He had volunteered for the war and volunteered for the dangerous assignment that led to his death. The New York chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars petitioned the federal government to provide a fitting memorial for the fallen poet-soldier. The government granted the petition and the Forest Service was tasked with finding a tract of virgin forest that could be preserved in honor of Joyce Kilmer. The best available tract was felt to be the Little Santeetlah Creek watershed in remote Graham County, North Carolina, just southwest of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. (The second “t” in Santeetlah is silent). The Forest Service purchased the 3,840 acres from the timber company, a dirt access road was constructed, and the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest was dedicated on July 30, 1936.
The Memorial Forest is an amazing place. The huge tulip poplar trees are the most obvious feature, but the whole watershed is remarkable with a rich variety of other state-record size trees, ferns, mosses and for a few weeks each spring, gazillions of wildflowers. The guide book claims there are more enormous trees here than any area of comparable size in the eastern North America. They are certainly big; my children as well as many forest visitors before and after them have confronted the question, “ How many people does it take to make a ring around the tree?” Of course this depends upon the size of the people, for my children and their friends it was usually about six. Over my 33 years in North Carolina I have been to the forest several times. I went with my small children who needed encouragement to hike the two mile trail; on a later visit my no longer small children ran way ahead of me. I was able to take my elderly parents, fortunately my mother was able to see the trees before she had her stroke and could no longer walk. Later with an empty nest at home I have been able to go by myself and with Laura, allowing me the freedom to lay on the forest floor and spend a half hour photographing a single wildflower.
It’s tempting to think of the Memorial Forest as an unspoiled wilderness, a fortunate relic of what the eastern American forest looked like before the arrival of Europeans and industry and logging. That’s actually not the case at all however. This forest, along with much of the biological world, continues to manifest the the profound ecological effects that have followed from the admixture of new world and old world flora and fauna and diseases following the European discovery of the Americas. The American chestnut tree was the most abundant tree in the southern Appalachian forest until it was wiped out by the imported fungal chestnut blight in the 1920s and 1930s. The loss of the chestnuts profoundly changed the appearance and ecology of the eastern woodlands and greatly reduced the wildlife and free-ranging livestock the forests could previously support. Starting perhaps 20 years ago the forest has again changed as the hemlocks are dying due to infestation by the imported hemlock woolly adelgid insect. So this forest, magnificent as it is, is quite different from the forest of the last centuries, and even that of a few decades ago.
In 2010 the Forest Service decided that the dying hemlocks bordering the Memorial Forest’s most popular trail posed a threat to the safety of visitors as the trees were libel to fall at anytime. In consultation with local and national conservation groups and Graham County officials, the Forest Service came up with an unusual plan for felling the designated dangerous trees by blowing them up in a controlled fashion with dynamite. The Forest Service explained their decision, “Since this is a wilderness area, we want it to look as natural as possible, smooth, sawn stumps just won’t look right. The dynamite blasts, however, leave a jagged, splintered stump that will mimic natural windthrow.” Accordingly explosive charges were attached to the hemlock trunks at varying levels; efforts were made to clear lost hunting dogs from the area, and the hemlocks were blown up.
I hiked the main trail four months after the blasting was completed. It looked awful. Blasted tree trunks were all about in the midst of the usual spring greenery. It was disconcerting to see a forest, dedicated to the memory of a young man killed by military ordinance, subjected to such treatment. But the Forest Service made a thoughtful decision and implemented it with care. Years later it really does look fine. It’s sad that the hemlocks aren’t there but their decomposing stumps and trunks blend in with the forest and contribute to its continuing life.
If you can walk two miles, go see the trees. They are lovely.
Optional bonus paragraph:
Probably of interest only to myself, I’ve had two other encounters with the legacy of Joyce Kilmer. I was taking an urban hike along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx several years ago and was surprised to come across the New York City Joyce Kilmer Park. This probably makes more sense as a memorial to Joyce Kilmer than does the Memorial Forest as he did live and write in New York City; I don’t think he was ever in western North Carolina at all. In any case it would be hard to imagine a setting more different than the Memorial Forest. The park is flat and manicured and bustling with people and surrounded by traffic and high rise apartment blocks. Like the Memorial Forest, the Grand Concourse may have seen better days but it is still magnificent with grand esplanades, people everywhere and wonderful views.
Then later, reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov I was surprised by a reference to the Memorial Forest. There it is, out of nowhere on page 157:
“A boulder, with a plaque, in memory of the author of ‘Trees’ (by now we are in Poplar Cove, N.C., reached by what my kind, tolerant, usually so restrained tour book angrily calls ‘a very narrow road, poorly maintained,’ to which, though no Kilmerite, I subscribe)”.
Some material for this post was taken from Hiking Trails of Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness Area by Tim Homan, and from a Smoky Mountain News Article by Dan Hendershot.