A Stick, A Night, A Fire

[Editor's Note: This personal essay by Zivara is not specifically about Balsamea, but expresses themes in a kindred spirit.  We welcome contriibutions like this.]

June, 2003 – I recently broke my favorite walking stick, a good companion of several years, purchased at an annual crafts festival at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY.  After a brief surge of sorrow — for my loss and for my stupidity in how I broke it — I quickly resolved to take advantage of the occasion to make a new one with my own saw and knife.  After a failed attempt at making a walking stick from a piece of Oak, I returned to the woods and cut two branches, the first a cane-height piece of Beech, the second a staff-height piece of Maple.  Both were cut just above a sub-branch that would serve as a handle head.

Over the next few days the Beech cane evolved under my knife into a beautiful piece, with a handle resembling a heron’s head, with a small knot for an eye.  The process of carving and sanding it gave me considerable pleasure, until, as the wood continued to cure, the head began to split.  I salvaged it by counter-sinking a screw through it, then filling the crack and over my screw’s head using wood-filler.  It has turned out wonderfully, after six coats of polyurethane and light sanding between each coat.

The Maple staff awaits carving.  I generally prefer a stick of cane height to a staff, but I thought it would be nice to have both.  In the event of hiking with a friend, I would offer the friend their choice.  Each with a hooked head, they could serve as pulls for hiking mates to help each other through climbing obstacles or creek-fording, or to recapture a hat blown out of the canoe.

Actually, the Beech was my second attempt.  The first was with that piece of Oak.  It failed as a cane for three reasons.  First, I had not sawed it properly to keep a branching piece at the head as a handle.  Second, it was too heavy.  Finally, the Oak’s long fibers made carving across their lines difficult.  So I turned that one into a campfire poker, for which it is more than well suited.  It is a darned fancy campfire poker.  Being Oak, the tip won’t burn off quickly, and it won’t rot lying across the top of the fireplace through the seasons.  Nor will it become a victim of termites or carpenter ants.

Browsing my tree guidebooks for perhaps the hundredth time, I was reminded that Ash is popular for the manufacture of furniture and baseball bats.  I resolved to find myself a good piece of Ash.  I studied the compound leaf pattern in the books until I was clear on what to seek afield.

Off I went to the woods, laughing to myself about how much smarter it may be to chase a piece of Ash rather than “a piece of ass” (as it was known in Navy vernacular).  Far be it from me to deny that the comforts and pleasures of a female companion are good things.  The trouble is that as I carve out my place in her life, unlike a piece of Ash, a woman needs to carve her place in my life, and I’m not amenable to carving unless I hold the knife.  Unlike the Ash, she talks, makes demands, has needs, attitudes, desires, and many fears, and she won’t tolerate being left in the trunk of the car between hikes.  My piece of ash never talks about anything I don’t want to hear, and when it does talk, I’m VERY interested.  Furthermore, rather than help me ford streams and ascend arduous mountainsides and whack my way through thick forest undergrowth, as does a good hard stick, despite all the comforts and pleasures of her company at home, in the woods not all women are as sturdy as a good stick (nor men).  And my stick is never afraid of the dark, or rain, or coyotes or bears, or not getting home in time to feed the cat.  At my age, a good woods-mate is harder to find than a good piece of Ash.

It took half a day to find my stick, but finally I did find something that looked like the pictures in the books, and sawed off a nice piece with a good handle on it.  Along the way, I also found another piece of Maple that seemed perfectly suited for my purposes.  Now I have the raw materials for four walking partners:  the salvaged Beech, the Maple staff, the Ash, and the second piece of Maple.

On the night of Friday, May 30, I took the Ash for a walk, in its raw, untamed state, to Big Pine Refuge.  Along the way we “discussed” how the handle should be carved for the best fit and grip, and studied the potential advantages to a little shorter length.

This was the occasion when the rock walls of the fireplace at Big Pine Refuge took on their first bit of blackening.  I arrived at the campsite half an hour before dark.  An hour later, the tree canopy above me glowed in the orange light of a blaze, but not so much that it drowned the twinkling of stars filtering through the holes in the trees silhouetted against the bright black sky.  Once again, I saw the brightness of the night.

Thoreau said, “Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible.”  Perhaps this is some of the genius in the design of the human eye.  Someone has argued that the human eye is not a light receptor, but an emitter.  Either way, it is true, according to the New York Conservationist magazine, that after forty-five minutes in the dark, humans get the best degree of night vision.  I have tested this and found it true.

Night vision is not the same as day vision.  One must accept that things visible to us in the dark do not appear in the same way as in daylight.  There are differences in the shadings, and different ways of looking.  Some things visible in the day are invisible at night, but other things stand out as never seen in daylight.  Night vision is something to learn, as in the way one learns to swim.  It is merely crawling in water, but altogether different from crawling on land.  Different principles apply.  Seeing in the dark is a different way of seeing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if forty-five minutes in the dark yielded new vision in matters of truth, love, relationships, or career?  On second thought, it is true that spending concentrated, consciously aware spells of time in darkness or silence does open channels to wisdom not gained otherwise.  Thus we have meditation.

I spent three hours in a meditation of sorts that night at the fireplace in the woods.  All the familiar sounds we take for granted became more clearly pronounced, and they spoke distinctly to me.

I heard as if for the first time the constant shish of not only the nearby creek, about 200 feet away to the south, but also the lower-toned gentle roar of the more distant creek, twice as far away to the north.  They said with perfect diction that life is a river, in which I am immersed, and which flows through me, even flows as me.

With each piece of fire wood I snapped apart, the sharp cracking sound advised me that the energy in that sound, and the energy it took me to break it, is the same energy that would become heat and light and smoke and ash in the process of the fire.  The seasoned life in the wood makes a good fire, not its death.

I fancied as a sort of laughter the snaps, pops, and crackles of the fire.  I smiled back and agreed that things really are very funny.  I chuckled at a view from outside myself, seeing this character reclining alone in the middle of the night on a piece of plastic-lined painter’s drop-cloth spread in the middle of the woods on a small lawn he planted around a big rock fireplace.

I looked up at the Rorschach splatters of the treetops against the starry sky and said thanks to the Genius who gives such vision, such light in darkness, even the light of humor, to see such things in the bright black of night.  I observed that only some Observer greater than myself can step out of me and look at myself, and share the view with this so-called self I call me.  This Observer lives partly in me, and moves freely in and out of me as it chooses, and still there is some part of me that seems able to direct its perspective to some extent.

Finally, after burning three small logs and quite a pile of smaller stock I had accumulated over previous weeks’ visits to the Refuge, I let the fire dwindle down to just orange-glowing coals.  I laid back and relaxed, as if to let sleep befall me if it would.  “I could sleep here just like this,” I mused.  “If it got chilly, I’d wake up and feed the fire again.”  I thought about the fact that I had a jacket and two emergency “space blankets” in my backpack.  “Maybe I should just reload the fireplace with a big bundle of kindling and small logs and just stay the night.”  Undecided, I just dropped all thought and let my heart and mind focus on everything I could hear, feel, smell, and taste.

The ember-light dimmed still more as I lay listening to the creek and watching the stars.  The wind had become almost perfectly still.  A soft, thin mist hung in the dark all around me.  Life lay still in perfect silence and darkness.

Far off to the southwest I heard a wind rolling down from the mountains.  I listened as it slowly rolled toward me, then directly overhead, stirring the trees above me, first at their tops only, then lower, each phase with a unique sound, but the movement of air at the ground with me was minimal.  Then silence enveloped me again.  I closed my eyes and slid toward sleep, but stopped in some half-waking zone.  In a little while, from the northwest, another wind rolled down, this time missing my camp by a few hundred feet, blowing by to my left.

I could not leave.  I stoked up the fire with a fistful of long sticks broken into little pieces, and watched as they quickly burned away again to barely glowing embers blanketed in their own ash.

I stood and prayed in gratitude for the place, for the time there, for the fire, for each of the things I enjoyed observing and feeling, and for a special dispensation of protective grace on this site and its surroundings, and for a blessing upon all creatures who might pass through here, human or otherwise.  Then I broke the night by turning on my flashlight, drowned the embers with water I’d brought along, saddled up in jacket, hat and backpack, retrieved my trusty piece of Ash, and brought her home.

On the way down the road in the car, about a quarter-mile from home, a large white owl descended to the middle of the road, pouncing on some rodent.  I stopped and shut off the car engine, watching the owl in my headlights as it watched me between gobbles of its snack.   After a while of gazing at each other, the owl flew up to perch on the roadside power line.  I started the engine and drove off, accepting this rare kind of encounter as a sign that I had spent the night wisely.

Zivara

Quoting from The Company of Trees by Joseph Jastrab:

I find myself walking the same wooded trails over and over again. This allows me frequent visits with a few trees with whom I’ve become closely acquainted. I watch how they handle themselves in the wind, admire their steadfast grounding in the earth, the strength and flexibility of trunk and limb. Through it all, they stand. They invite me to do likewise. I waver. I want “to keep my options open.” I can imagine no envy in them for my ability to wander across the earth in search of my place. None whom I’ve met have given me the slightest inclination that they would trade places with me. That’s the thing about trees, they don’t trade places. They belong.

They live forever at home. Their commitment to the dark earth they stand on roots them into something eternal. No, they watch me wander, but do not lose themselves in the watching.

Buried in the origins of our language, I find an ancient reflection of my feeling for these trees. The word “true” and the word “tree” have sprouted from the same Germanic root. This gives me hope. What we recognize in the life of another is always something that lives inside us – something waiting to be seen and claimed by our own eyes.

Strands of hemlock have offered a particularly warm invitation to be among them. The silence they generate is perceptibly different than that of a stand of oak or maple or even their close cousin pine. I cannot continue walking through a hemlock grove without pausing for a moment. My eyes are attracted to the way their lacy layers of needled branches disperse the light, scattering the ground with drifts of sunlight. Their straight trunk and furrowed bark embody a simple dignity they are not ashamed to hide.

My ears relax into the soft drone of their branches at play with the wind. But it’s something else that brings me to a standstill – something so refined and spacious about these beings. They have the power to absorb my busy mind. They leave me mindless.

[Read more from Joseph Jastrab at The Hero's Journey Programs website.]

Mr. Jastrab’s essay struck a resonant chord in me, as I have had similar relationships with trees, on an individual basis, and with groups and types of trees. Mr. Jastrab expressed my feelings about it almost exactly.

On his note about the roots of the words “tree” and “truth,” according to Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 10th Edition (1995), the history of “true” reads like this:

Middle English “trewe,” from Old English “treowe” (faithful); akin to Old High German “gitriuwi” (faithful), Old Irish “derb” (sure), and probably Sanskrit “daruna” (hard), “daru” (wood).

For “tree” they offer this etymology:

Middle English, from Old English “treow;” akin to Old Norse “tre” (tree), Greek “drys,” Sanskrit “daru” (wood)

No surprise then, that so many wisdom traditions venerate trees, or find inspiration in meditations and contemplations upon them, or develop wisdom analogies and parables related to them. This may give a whole new sense to the Pagan origin of our modern tradition of Christmas trees.

Some samples of “tree truth” …

Larger and finer meanings are read into the older legends of the plants, and the universality of certain myths is expressed in the concurrence of ideas in the beginnings of the great religions. One of the first figures in the leading cosmologies is a tree of life guarded by a serpent. In the Judaic faith this was the tree in the garden of Eden; the Scandinavians made it an ash, Ygdrasil; Christians usually specify the tree as an apple, Hindus as a soma, Persians as a homa, Cambodians as a talok; this early treee is the vine of Bacchus, the snake-entwined caduceus of Mercury, the twining creeper of the Eddas, the bohidruma of Buddha, the fig of Isaiah, the tree of Aesculapius with the serpent around his trunk.
– Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits and Plants, 1911

For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
That extends its roots by a stream
And will not fear when the heat comes;
But its leaves will be green,
And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
Nor cease to yield fruit.
– Jeremiah 17:8

Then I thought, “I shall die in my nest,
And I shall multiply {my} days as the sand.
My root is spread out to the waters,
And dew lies all night on my branch.
My glory is {ever} new with me,
And my bow is renewed in my hand.”
– Job 29:18-25

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
– John Muir

Dear friend, all theory is gray,
And green the golden tree of life.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in Faust

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
– William Shakespeare, in As You Like It

The method of Plum Village is that whenever we look at a tree, which is swaying around in the wind, we should not be too attentive to the top of the tree. Bring your eyes down to the trunk of the tree, and you feel more secure. Because when we look at the trunk of the tree, we see that it is being held by roots which go down very deep; it is very solid. And we feel differently; we feel the tree will be all right. But if we look up at the branches, we feel that they can be broken at any time.

Our person is the same as far as our body and our mind — we have roots going down deep. If we just look at our emotions, we feel very feeble, frail. But if we can come back to our roots, we will no longer be the victims of the storm. This solid part of our body is below our navel. When we feel a very strong emotion, we shouldn’t dwell in the area of our brain or our heart. We should not sway around in our thinking or our feeling. W hen we have a strong emotion, we should bring our attention down below our navel and dwell in that place. We should breathe in and breathe out, being aware of the rising and falling of our abdomen. Sitting, we are aware of our abdomen rising. Sitting, we are aware of our abdomen falling. We practice like this because the abdomen is the root of our body. At the same time, it is the root of our mind. The root of our mind is not the mind consciousness, but the deeper levels of the store consciousness.

So we should not allow this feeling to blow us around from on top. Instead we should come down to the trunk of our being, which is lower down. If we know how to sit solidly for 15 minutes, breathing in and out, and being aware of the rising and falling of the abdomen, that emotion will pass. We will be able to live again. We will smile and be able to say, “It was just a storm. And I was skilful in that storm, I was able to return to my root.”

– from a Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on February 19, 1998, in Plum Village, France.
The Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness – Mindfulness Of Body and Feelings

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.
– William Blake, 1799, The Letters

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

– Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, “Ah!”
– Joseph Campbell

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.
– Chinese proverb

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
– Willa Cather (1873-1947), O Pioneers, 1913

Sometimes Thou may’st walk in Groves,
which being full of Majestie will much advance the Soul.
– Thomas Vaughan, Anima Magica Abscondita

The groves were God’s first temples.
– William Cullen Bryant, A Forest Hymn

A tree falls the way it leans.
– Bulgarian Proverb

And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance—
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins.
– Kathleen Raine, Envoi

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he
provideth a kindness for many generations, and
faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.
– Henry Van Dyke

Life without love is like a tree without blossom and fruit.
– Khalil Gibran

When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?
– Seneca

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the ages can.
– William Wordsworth, in The Tables Turned

That each day I may walk unceasingly on the banks of my water, that my soul may repose on the branches of the trees which I planted, that I may refresh myself under the shadow of my sycomore.
– Egyptian tomb inscription, circa 1400 BCE
(Sycamore trees were held to be sacred in ancient Egypt and are the first trees represented in ancient art.)

Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky. For these reasons it is natural to feel we might learn wisdom from them, to haunt about them with the idea that if we could only read their silent riddle rightly we should learn some secret vital to our own lives; or even, more specifically, some secret vital to our real, our lasting and spiritual existence.
– Kim Taplin, Tongues in Trees, 1989, p. 14.

The oldest living thing known in the world is a tree. It is a Bristlecone Pine known as “Methuselah,” in the White Mountains on the California-Nevada border, at an elevation of over 10,000 feet. With a trunk over 4 feet wide, and height of about 55 feet, it is estimated to be more than 4,700 years old. There was one a few hundred years older, but someone cut it down to see how old it was! See the PBS website for their program on the Methuselah Tree.

- The Balsamean

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
– William Shakespeare, in As You Like It

The groves were God’s first temples.
– William Cullen Bryant, in A Forest Hymn

——————–

There is no book like that written into the heart by the voice of the forest. Human nature, if allowed, can be the tablet on which the forest writes her instructions, songs, and inspirations.

Aranyaka is a Sanskrit term referring to trees, forest or wilderness (ara, aran, aranya) and scripture. It can be loosely translated “The Wilderness Books.” It may also connote forest monks or their writings. The Aranyaka is part of the ancient Hindu texts contained in the Vedas. The Princeton University lexical database WordNet defines it as “a treatise resembling a Brahmana but to be read or expounded by anchorites in the quiet of the forest.” For more information, see the Wikipedia article about the Aranyaka. There is also a Hindu scripture known as the Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad (“great forest book”), regarded as one of the oldest texts of the Upanishads.

(For more about the Aranyaka, see this search listing at sacred-texts.com, or go to www.sacred-texts.com and click on Search.)

——————–

Did you ever come upon a place and felt that there was “something special” about it, but you could not say specifically why you felt that way?

This is how the owner of Balsamea Forest Refuge felt about a certain stretch of land many times while driving by it. After about two years of being only generally familiar with it as viewed from the road, an opportunity arose to purchase a piece of that land. That piece is now called Balsamea, or Balsamea Forest Refuge.

What does this have to do with Aranyaka? Actually, nothing, except in our imaginative pleasure with finding words for what we feel at Balsamea. We chose the name “Aranyaka” as a way to refer to the spiritual enrichment of communing with the forest. More specifically, it is the name we gave to a special location within the Balsamea Forest Refuge, located in the heart of its denser balsam fir and spruce stand, at the feet of three giant pines (two white and one red) that are among the oldest on the property. We are slowly, carefully developing that spot into something like a natural chapel, as a hub of special refuge, with trails extending out from it in four directions. It is just one of those spots in the forest that somehow “speaks to you,” if you happen to be someone susceptible to hearing its particular voice.

Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky. For these reasons it is natural to feel we might learn wisdom from them, to haunt about them with the idea that if we could only read their silent riddle rightly we should learn some secret vital to our own lives; or even, more specifically, some secret vital to our real, our lasting and spiritual existence.
– Kim Taplin, Tongues in Trees, 1989, p. 14.

One day after meditating on the pine needle laden floor of this special three-pine Aranyaka natural chapel, the Balsamean took a notion to remove some trees to make space for sharing it with friends. He walked slowly amidst the open spaces under the three great pines, carefully considering which to cut down of the smaller trees growing densely around the perimeter, and how they might be used to make things for the Aranyaka natural chapel, or just stacked as firewood.

For an unknown reason he looked up into a tree as he stood thinking on the east side of the three-pine Aranyaka chapel site. He found a small owl quietly watching him from a balsam fir branch only about two feet above his head. They studied each other intently until the Balsamean slowly stepped away. The owl did not move.

“Okay,” said the Balsamean, “I will not cut down your trees.”

——————–

In the sense that aranya means “belonging to the wilderness” or forest, we enjoy the feeling of belonging, of being truly “home,” of being solidly grounded and safe in the forest, among friends, even while “alone” in terms of having any human company. Our reverent feelings for the forest make us never lonely there.

We don’t quite think of the forest, our aranya, as something to worship, but as a community of peaceful fellowship with the nature of things as they are. Although we do not institutionalize this sense of reverence in any specifically religious way (though friends among us may, and can if they wish), for all Friends of Balsamea the forest — at Balsamea and everywhere — does involve some degree of recognition of Nature as sacred.

Balsamea is our Aranyaka because we find written in its nature, and arising from our immersion in that nature, a kind of “scripture” or “writing” or teaching. It is the ineffable soul of Nature inspiring the souls, hearts and minds of people.

Lead Us From the Unreal To Real,
Lead Us From Darkness To Light,
Lead Us From Death To Immortality,
Aum (the universal sound)
Let There Be Peace Peace Peace.

- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28.

Immortality? Is there such a thing? We don’t know, and don’t really concern ourselves with it. We know only that through immersion in the natural Aranyaka, breathed continually in and out by the forest, we enjoy a sense of the interconnectedness, the “interbeing” of everything, and the continuity of life streaming from long before us, through our present moment, into whatever comes next, not as separate times but as a continuum solidly grounded in the earth.

What we write at Balsamea is our Aranyaka, our forest-inspired book. Thus, we arrive at the name of this blog, Balsamea Aranyaka.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the ages can.
– William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned

By the way, when contemplating names for this felt-sense of harmony with the forest, we also contemplated a concatenation of two German words, Kiefer (pine tree) and Zuflukt (refuge), for the term “Kieferzuflukt.” We just like the sound of the word! Some day we may use it to designate another special spot in the forest, perhaps one to be known for a spirit or sense of playfulness.

- The Balsamean

… the place …

Balsamea: a bit of Adirondack forest

The Balsamea Forest Refuge (BFR) is a privately owned 19-acre forested lot located in the northern reaches of the Adirondack Mountain region of northeastern Upstate New York, west of Lake Champlain and Vermont, within about an hour’s drive from the Canadian border and Plattsburgh, NY.

Regrown from original forest cleared in the 19^th Century, Balsamea is now the home of (in estimated order of population density) balsam fir, white pine, maple, birch, beech, red pine, spruce, aspen, a rare few oak, cedar, and scotch pine, and a few yet unidentified species of trees, and the wildlife they support.

Among animals sighted in recent years there are whitetail deer, fox, turkey, red squirrel, porcupine, rabbit, and a variety of birds such as finches, chickadees, sparrows, robins, blue jays, woodpeckers, doves, crows, and hawks. Though eastern coyotes and black bears have not been seen or heard lately at Balsamea, they are in the area, and a very rare moose may wander through from time to time. A few harmless snakes are around, all manner of northeastern forest insects, and mice, of course, and the resident game warden, Dr. Buddha Buddy The Miracle Dog. We are not aware of any invasive species, but are concerned about encroachment by the pine-killing Sirex Woodwasp, and suspect that Spruce Budworm takes some firs and spruces to make room for our developing hardwoods.

A variety of shrubs, berries, grasses and flowers grow throughout, especially many wild blueberries. About a dozen pink ladyslipper orchids have been spotted, and there are sure to be more decorating the land with their delicate June blooms. The soil is mossy, acidic and rocky.

The property is very flat throughout, with no surface water or wetland features, sitting on top of something like a plateau half a mile above a major river. Although we have a share of black flies and mosquitoes in season, the lack of water features helps make them less a nuisance than in other areas.

Four rock walls run through the property, ranging from 1 to 4 feet high and from 3 to 6 feet wide. Part of the property near the road frontage was once the corner of a farm field long ago abandoned to nature, now overgrown with trees. Guessing from the existence of the rock walls, the property may have been used for farming, livestock grazing, or maybe housing for a nearby iron ore mining village (extinct since the late 19th Century). No old wells or building foundations have been found on the lot. There is no evidence of mines or mining equipment on the lot, either. The mines are located a short distance away, and have, to our knowledge from historical accounts, all flooded and caved in long ago.

Except for a small camp established by the current owner, and some selective logging of the largest, oldest trees by the former owner around 2002, there has been no human development on the lot since approximately 1890 when the mining village closed down.

The lot is currently surrounded by other forested properties except for one house across the road.

The Adirondacks

The Adirondack Mountains of Northeastern New York State are part of the Laurentian Mountain system of Canada, not the Appalachian chain as many mistakenly believe. Balsamea Forest Refuge is located within the Adirondack “Blue Line,” denoting the roughly six million acre region under the jurisdiction of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) created in 1971 by the State legislature “to develop long-range land use plans for both public and private lands within the Park.” The so-called “Park” was originally a forest preserve created in 1892 by amendment to the State constitution, first denoted on a map by a blue line drawn around the preserve (thus the “Blue Line” name). Today about half of the “Park” is public forest preserve, the other half privately owned lands highly regulated by the APA. Refer to the Adirondack Forest Preserve page of the NY Department of Environmental Conservation.

- The Balsamean

… the tree …

Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea)

Balsamea Forest Refuge is named for the majestic spires and fragrant needles of its most populous tree, Abies balsamea, a popular conifer in the New York Adirondack and New England regions, commonly known as Balsam Fir, a close cousin of the Fraser Fir endemic to the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Other names for the tree

The Balsam Fir is also known as the Canadian Balsam. Other common names are Eastern Fir, Bracted Balsam Fir and Blister Fir (owing to resinous sap-filled blisters in the bark). It is sometimes called the Balm of Gilead Tree, although that name is more correctly associated with the Middle Eastern “Balsam of Mecca” (Commiphora gileadensis, Commiphora meccanensis or Commiphora opobalsamum), probably the balm referred to in Genesis 37:25 and other Bible passages.

Aromatic balm

The word “balm” derives from the Latin balsamum, a word with Semitic roots, meaning an aromatic preparation or healing ointment, a spicy aromatic odor, or a soothing restorative agency. Indeed, if you rub or crush fresh balsam fir needles in your fingers and inhale the aroma, it is uplifting to the mind.

Uses

Balsam Fir has many uses. The sap has medicinal uses as a balm. Balsam Fir is one of the most popular Christmas trees, well known for its fragrant needles lasting a long time in holiday season decorations including wreaths and sprays, often made into aromatic pillows and potpourri sachets for scenting clothing and linens, or to make incense and a tea from the foliage. Balsam wood, sap, cones and inner bark have many other industrial, medicinal and nutritional uses for humans and wildlife.

Learn more about the balsam fir from the links below.

About the Balsam Fir tree: U.S. Forest Service Index of Species Information – (FEIS – Fire Effects Information System) U.S. Forest Service Silvics Manual Article – Habitat, Life History, Uses USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Plants Profile – Good graphic images and technical details. Conifers.org Profile – The Gymnosperm Database Google search result on “abies balsamea” USDA Plants Database profile on Abies balsamea Flora of North America database entry on Abies balsamea Rook.org – The Natural History of the Northwoods comprehensive report on Abies balsamea DiscoverLife.org compendium of articles and pictures from various sources, including some of the above among others.

Uses of Balsam Fir: Plants for a Future Database summary of nutritional, medicinal and other uses University of Texas Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center article on balsam fir mentioning benefits ApartmentTherapy balsam fir incense sticks for sale (commercial website) Ontario sawmilling article in Logging and Sawmilling Journal about making lumber with balsam fir comparable to other softwoods

Balsam Crafts: BetterBaking.com article on making scented sachets, potpourri, etc. (commercial magazine article) Herbs2000.com article on broad range of balsam fir uses (commercial website) University of Maine Cooperative Extension web page about How to Make Balsam Wreaths BalsamBuddies.com (commercial website) page on how to make balsam wreaths Northwind Farms (commercial website) page on how to make balsam wreaths Minnesota Forest Stewardship Program brochure (PDF file) on balsam fir sustainable harvesting technique, “Balsam Bough Careful Harvest Fact Sheet“

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