The Tallest Known Tree in New York Falls in the Forest

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“Tree 103 was scarred and scabby; it creaked in the wind; it sagged in the rain. It had lost the dewy glow that it had back in 1675, but haven’t we all lost the lustre of our youth?” susanorlean writes an obituary for the tallest known tree in New York.

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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.

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.

The pine got its designation as Tree 103 in 2006, when a forestry expert measured the trees in the grove and tagged them in the order in which he measured them. Tree 103 was a mighty beanpole, and yet, by the rules of big-tree classification, it was not the state’s biggest. Champion trees are scored by combining their height in feet, their circumference in inches, and a quarter of the spread of their crowns.

Last July, one of Tree 103’s neighbors snapped and toppled. Tree 103 broke its fall. The weight was much to bear, and then the autumn winds slapped it around. Hikers who went to visit the tree on December 11th found instead a raggedy broken trunk and a fallen warrior. No one had been around to hear it fall, but, given its size and height, it would have released a huge amount of energy, equivalent to several sticks of dynamite, and it knocked over a number of smaller trees when it went down.

Afterword is an obituary column that pays homage to people, places, and things we’ve lost. If you’d like to propose a subject for an Afterword piece, write to us at

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soooo did it make a sound?

This just shows how out-of-touch Joe Biden is.

Do not despair: Tree 103 is no longer thrusting into the sky, but it lives on as forest debris, making fungi and bugs happy. “It’s dead, yes,” Waskiewicz said, “but I prefer to think that it’s just not vertical anymore.”

Love this Do not despair: Tree 103 is no longer thrusting into the sky, but it lives on as forest debris, making fungi and bugs happy. “It’s dead, yes,” Waskiewicz said, “but I prefer to think that it’s just not vertical anymore.”

Note to citizens of mama Africa, people in other parts of the globe care about their trees as well. Let's care for each other.

BidensAmerica

susanorlean I love it.

susanorlean How do you know it fell? Did you see the fuckin’ tree fall?

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