Looking forward to the Rendezvous at Cook Forest   E. Daniel Ayres   Mar 30, 2007 17:33 PST  The land I walk regularly these days has few large trees left. Recently, our neighborhoods here in Washtenaw County, MI have been ground zero for the Emeral Ash Borer. A very popular street tree planted extensively starting after WWII has virtually disappeared. I counted the rings on the stump left when the local park authorities had the shade tree over the community park pavilion in my subdivision removed. It was 64 or 65 years old, and was probably a 1" or 2" nursery tree planted when the pavilion was erected after WW II. I am so looking forward to a chance to once again walk Seneca Trail and see some of the big trees I remember from a time over 50 years ago. Back when I was a child of 8 and 9 years, my parents made arrangements with a "regular" summer camper at the upper campground at Cook Forest State Park and left me to my own devices "at large" for several weeks each summer equipped with a 20" French made aluminum bicycle with solid red rubber tires. I got my evening meal and checked in with an old couple that camped all summer on the same platform year after year each day, but I slept in my own tent on a nearby rented campsite which my parents set up but only occupied on week-ends. During the week, I would get up in the morning and make my own bacon and egg breakfast over a wood fire in one of the fireplaces erected in the 1930's by the CCC. After cleaning up the dishes, I sometimes rode down to the spring fed swimming hole and took a freezing shower under the spillway. On other days, I'd grab some sandwich makings out of the family icebox and put up a lunch, then take off on one of the trails. Several times, I rode to the fire tower and climbed up to just below the floor of the observation box (which was always locked and empty when I was there) to look out over the valley for hours at a time. I got to know a big 10 point buck that browsed the thick undergrowth behind our campsite. I also knew the skunk that lived under a nearby tent platform quite well. My mother was emphatic that I shouldn't feed the wildlife but if I was lazy about washing the skillet after breakfast, the skunk would help keep the layer of bacon grease on the cast iron at the proper thickness. One of my most vivid memories of that time was the transition from sun to shade on the trail into the Forest Cathedral area. It was 20 degrees cooler under the hemlocks and you had to wait for your eyes to adjust to the low light before you could see any distance. I was very disappointed on a visit in 1985 to see the impact of storm damage there. It wasn't as dark any more, and it seemed a lot warmer. E. Daniel Ayres afforestation.org Looking forward to the Rondevous at Cook Forest   Dale Luthringer   Apr 04, 2007 19:51 PDT  Hi Daniel, It's great to hear personal recollections such as yours about Cook Forest in times past. Sometimes at a campfire program I'll ask who's been coming to the park the longest... "5 years & up, raise your hands" "10 years & up, raise your hands" "20 years..." "30 years..." not many hands now "40 years..." "50 years!!!" "60 years!!!" now there's only one hand left raised "70 years!!!" still raised... "80 years!!!" still raised... "90 years!!!" the gentlemen finally puts his hand down Then I'll say, "So how long has it been, sir?" Then he'll tell me, "Dale, I've been coming here every year of my life since I was 6 months old. The only time I wasn't here is when I was in WWII fighting over in Europe. I'm 87 years old." I hope to see this gentlemen again this summer. Cook Forest has a tendency to grow on a lot of us, and has been a family tradition for some going back to the late 1820's. Dale Cook Forest Rendezvous...   E. Daniel Ayres   Apr 25, 2007 16:38 PDT  ENTS: Thanks to everyone who helped make this event happen.   It is so gratifying to see first hand that there are people who share the interest and excitement I feel when I look at a big tree.   Dale's trigonometry lesson gets an A+ from me because of his careful attention to both sources and magnitudes of errors. I doubt if I personally will every own and use any of the expensive measurement equipment, preferring to take pictures and call in the experts if I find anything significant in my travels.   My high school geometry and trigonometry teacher once again was remembered for her awesome "extra credit" week of lectures on estimation delivered to a room full of seniors feeling the heat and waiting for graduation. I took a trip down memory lane and revisited the Ridge Camp campsite I inhabited in the summers of 1950, and 1951.   Three familiar trees near campsite #18 were still there, surprisingly to me, not that much bigger 56 years later, but almost everything else is changed. The old handmade stone fireplaces are gone, There were no big wooden tent platforms, the deeply shaded and thickly treed, needle carpeted flat where I met my first deer has been gutted to make room for buildings, dug up to bring in electricity for RV's, and filled with gravel to support vehicles. Everywhere around the circle things seem worn and tired.   The duff seems thinner, and in many places has been worn away by human traffic. There were stumps everywhere bringing to mind trees that died or were removed to open things up, and only traces of the old circle road remain.   Its pavement was uneven and broken up in places those many years ago, but I recognized a trace of the original pavement near the end of the entrance road going up before the first dip. Hopefully the rain we are getting here will bring needed additional moisture in as it moves east. During the Saturday afternoon tree climb, as I was making my contributions to the disturbance of mosses and helping trample the area around the tree being climbed, I asked myself, "How long will the area around the site take to recover from our visit?"   Anyone comment? Cook Forest seemed so big back then. Now it is tiny. E. Daniel Ayres, AKA ZundapMan   Home