Published: July 20, 2009 06:11 am      

Old heartbreaks, new hopes

Once the royalty of the eastern forest, the American chestnut is frozen in time between the memories of those who lived with it and the new efforts of people trying to save it.

Before the blight fatally struck the American chestnut in the early 1900s, and then spread along its entire range over the next 50 years, the tree numbered an estimated 4 billion and accounted for one in four of every tree in the eastern forests. It ranged from mid-Maine to Georgia, and as far East as the Ohio Valley.

In some parts of Appalachia the tree was a food source for people and livestock, the major player in the food chain for wildlife, and a form of currency for those who paid their bills at the general stores every fall.

While it is unfortunate that the glory of the American chestnut tree lies in the past, we do have those still with us who can attest, first hand, to its dominating presence in the local forests.

Since its demise, the tree is mostly a source of memories for people who grew up in a much different time.

Vera Virgin was born and raised along Long Branch near Oldtown as one of 11 children. At 93, she can remember as far back as the 1920s when she and her brother, Charlie, would rise early on frosty October mornings and go out to one of the chestnut trees on the farm.

“We’d go down the back yard, across a little creek, up the hill just a little ways to a beautiful old chestnut tree,” recalled the former one-room schoolteacher. “They were good. They were pretty. You didn’t mess with the burrs, they were sharp.”

On some days, her father would get up even earlier and go out for nuts before Vera and Charlie did, just to tease his children. “That’s a pleasant childhood memory of mine,” she said.

Virgin eventually went off to Morehead to college and doesn’t remember when the tree began to falter under the blight. “I don’t know exactly when the old chestnut died,” she said, “but I’ll tell you I know I would have been sad.”

Tom Heaberlin, 87, has similar memories growing up on the family farm — established during the Civil War — overlooking Wurtland along the ridges above Heaberlin Road.

Tall and lean, he can walk the familiar woods and still find remnants of his childhood giants. One cluster from an old root system has sprouted new growth for more than 44 years. Those trees eventually die from the blight within seven or eight years, then the roots sprout more.

“I remember when I was a boy, probably back in the early thirties, after a frost in the fall of the year, I would go out the chestnut tree,” he recalled in his quiet, raspy voice. “There’s one tree I remember distinctly; I don’t know why I remember it above all the others because there were lots of chestnuts in the forest. The leaves had fallen and the chestnut burrs had opened and I’d sit down in the leaves and carefully rake them apart and fill my pockets up with chestnuts.”

Even though the ‘perfect tree’ has disappeared as a way of life, there can be millions of them sprouting throughout the eastern United States at any given time, though most never live more than eight to 10 years. Some of the root systems, protected underground from the blight, have been recycling themselves with root sprouts since the blight first attacked.

Pennsylvania native Scott Friedof holds a more futuristic view with his approach to the American Chestnut. At 41, he’s one of the younger enthusiasts out to save the tree – then bring it back.

He’s part of a small band of serious enthusiasts who have been looking for survivors in order to keep the cycle going until back-breeding efforts produce a tree that can resist the blight and re-enter the forest.

Freidof is president of the Kentucky Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation. Based in Morehead as a biologist with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, his job and interests give him the perfect reason to find and work with the trees.

His latest project tree is on a high ridge in southwestern Fleming County. The 20-foot, 10-year-old tree has been attacked by the blight, but is showing some resistance and has flowered the last two years. A mudpack around the trunk, held on with a plastic covering, slows the spread of the blight while he can work with the tree for a few a more years.

The tree didn’t produce its own nuts last year, but trees pollinated from it at the American Chestnut Foundation’s Meadowview Research Farm in Virginia did produce nuts, so there is hope for working with it a few more years before it dies.

“The truth is I’ve just always been interested in the forest and wildlife,” said Freidof, sitting under the canopy of the Fleming County survivor. “The chestnut tree is such heartbreaking story, but also such a hopeful story that we may someday have the ability to put this tree back in the forest. I can only imagine what that would do for wildlife.”

For Floyd Willis, the American Chestnut has turned his days into a treasure hunt.

Ever an optimist, he spends his days in the hills as a forester for the Kentucky Division of Forests working with landowners who want to manage their timber stands. Since becoming interested in the native chestnut, he now keeps a lookout for those survivors strong enough to flower and produce pollen.

Willis’ interest in the tree started as a boy on the farm in Carter County. The stories his parents and grandparents told him about the gray ghosts, the bleach-white chestnuts that had died from the blight, were of his family using the tree in their daily lives for wood, food, and livestock feed.

“Before the blight, my ancestors lived off the American chestnut,” said Willis while looking over a 30-foot flowering tree in Elliott County. “They stored them in the attic to eat on them through the winter. The wood itself was rot resistant, straight-grained, and easy to work.

“It was just a wonderful tree and I always thought what a great thing to have that tree back and what a change our woods have gone under because they’ve lost 20 percent of their dominating stand.”

When he finds a tree, Willis walks a wide circle around it to find others that may have sprouted from old root systems. If there is a tree he thinks he can work with, one that will survive for a couple of years and flower, he catalogs its location.

“Personally, I’d love to see the chestnut, the old-fashioned chestnut, come back,” said Heaberlin in his studio at home. “Every time I had found an old root stock that was sprouting, I have thought of the disease that took them out. I’ve thought about the destruction too, really, a way of life.”

Working with the American chestnut has allowed Willis and Freidof to connect with the memories of Tom Heaberlin and Vera Virgin, even though the two generations have never met. All four of them agree that it’ll take perhaps centuries for the tree to come back into dominance in its former range.

JOHN FLAVELL can be reached at jflavell@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2659.