The Forest Remembers; A Wisconsin Land History Snapshot
At first glance this picture may look to many like another picture of an old silo with some trees in the background.
To me it shows much more, this picture from a property that my son, a Forester with Woodland Management Service, was doing some work on a while ago is a capsule of Wisconsin Land History.
This picture from Chippewa County Wisconsin is on a property recently purchased by a man who grew up in the area and is now working as a Financial planner in Madison, and decided to invest in a little bit of hunting land near his hometown.
The barn and home that stood near this old silo have long ago fallen down, the trees in the background range from young seedlings to large White Pines that have been here since the time of the big logging boom of the late 1800’s.
Since the late 1800’s when God planted these forest giants, a lot of people have invested their lives and a lot of toil and sweat into creating a new purpose for the land.
Most of this land was owned by a fellow named Cornell at one time who made a few bucks, created a lot of jobs, and started a University in New York, then the land went on to pioneer farmers, some of which worked for Cornell as loggers before he was finished with his part.
They cleared the remaining trees and stumps from most of the land, doing it the hard way, with horses and sometimes explosives.
They planted crops, built a home, built a farm, worked hard and lived and died here for many generations.
Eventually the final generation of hard working farmers grew old and their children found something better to do somewhere away from the land, and all the progress that the pioneers accomplished started to deteriorate.
We do not know who these people were, maybe the land remembers, but we do not know much about them except for the few remnants that the land has yet to reclaim.
The trees that they did not clear out along the yellow river in the background outlived them and all of their efforts, and soon trees will be reclaiming the field that we see in the picture between the silo and the forest in the background.
After nature reclaims the land it will be hard to see evidence of these hardy pioneers, the silo will remain for a while, the old car in the woods that I showed to you a few days ago will be around for a while longer, but most of the other evidence of their sweat and toil will be absorbed back into the forest that was here before the pioneers arrived and will be here long after we all have moved on.
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