In 1675, Mary Walcott, one of the accusers at the Salem witch trials, was born; Domenico II Contarini, the Doge of Venice, died; and, as best as forestry experts can determine, a bunch of gossamer-winged pine seeds landed on a forest clearing in the Adirondack Mountains of what would eventually be designated as the State of New York. Sun, rain, soil, good luck, and (probably) a property-line muddle combined to make this an auspicious landing. Pine trees hate shade, but this was a clearing in the dense Adirondack forest, most likely created by a hearty gust of wind that had toppled the previous overstory, so it was pine-friendly. The Mohawk and Oneida people who lived in the area left them alone. European farmers, who favored a clean-shaven pasture, wouldn’t arrive in the area for another century.
By the late eighteen-hundreds, when the region was being farmed and logged, this lucky bunch of trees had grown so big and thick that they were too large for most sawmills to cut, so they were left unmolested, while the smaller, more manageable trees nearby were made into dining-room tables and hope chests. As it happened, the land where the trees stood was near a newly drawn property line, so, most likely, when loggers began clearing the forest, they weren’t quite sure who owned the stand, and decided to leave it alone rather than get in a pickle over it.
Decades passed. The First World War came and went. The most convincing of the five best-known Anastasia pretenders appeared. Scotch tape was invented. The first Mr. Potato Head was manufactured. Electricity was generated by a nuclear reactor. People danced the Loco-Motion. In nearby Lake Placid, the Winter Olympics were held in 1932 and again in 1980. All the while, the trees on this eight-acre tract kept growing, surpassing fifty, then a hundred feet, and beyond. No other trees in the immediate area matched them in height. No one knows how tall the very tallest of them got, now that many in the grove have fallen, but Tree 103 (1675-2021) topped out at a hundred and sixty feet and nearly five inches, making it likely the tallest tree in New York State at the time of its death, in December.