Hikers looking up at the tall trees that surround them.
The PA/NJ-TACF Chapter was happy to sponsor a hike in the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania on October 6. This hike was part of the statewide “Walk in Penn’s Woods” event coordinated by the Walk in the Woods Partnership of Pennsylvania State University.
The group walked along a marked trail that traverses a relatively wild part of what is a surprisingly diverse and beautiful forest. Here and there along the trail are large surviving American chestnuts, some 8” diameter at breast height (dbh) or larger and over 50 feet tall. Participants were engaged, making interesting observations. One hiker was surprised by the bark on a 5” dbh chestnut. Unlike the bark on a young tree of this size, this one had bark that resembled that of a much older tree; perhaps because this tree, despite its size, was in fact quite old. Another hiker mentioned that the walk had really opened his eyes to the beauty of this deep forest. Someone else said that, while he heard many stories about American chestnuts, seeing some large surviving trees in the woods gave him a broader perspective.
The walk passed through several “chestnut hot spots” – sections with numerous chestnut stump sprouts and often with larger chestnuts trees. An idea that surfaced during the walk was that perhaps some of these hot spots could have competing oaks and other trees thinned out so as to encourage the resident chestnuts to bloom and set nuts, in effect, as hiker Ray Najjar put it, to “make the hot spots hotter.”