Canfield Fisher Pines

Canfield-Fisher-PinesTwo hundred years ago, a field two miles north of Arlington caught fire and burned, leaving the earth charred and killing the trees and plants that lived there. At the time, the town of Arlington didn’t exist. The fire was probably started by lightening or by settlers trying to clear trees from prospective farm land.

When the flames died out, nature stepped in immediately to fill the ecological blank slate that had been left behind. A puff of wind carried seeds from some nearby white pine trees to the empty field where they scattered and began to grow close together and tall. Soon, their branches formed a shady canopy above the forest floor, blocking sunlight from other young trees vying for space to grow. All of the shorter trees, starved of light, eventually died off and the ones continued to grow. Nothing disturbed them and they grew to be over a hundred feet tall. Read more…

 

-Brooke Norman