What stories can trees tell?

This dying Maple tree out in the local state forest isn’t just any tree. It grows along an abandoned class six road and is the last living witness to the pioneering family who was one of the first families that settled in our town. This tree was in their door yard and would have watched husband and wife tend to livestock, a garden, cut firewood, hunt game and add children to their family and eventually watch as they were all buried in the family plot just beyond.

If you look carefully just to the left of this grandma tree you can see an old foundation. It is pretty good-sized and there is a smaller one across the road. I don’t know if the larger one was for the family or was a barn. At one point in the 1800s, all of this area was deforested (as was nearly 80% of the state) for sheep farming.