Old Trees and the People Who Know Them

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On a cool and breezy summer afternoon, a team of seasoned ecologists and I made our way across a steep talus slope in a remote section of Vermont’s Groton State Forest: a 25-acre stand of ancient hardwoods known as Lords Hill. Tucked into the hills of the town of Marshfield, this forest is a rare remnant of an older age—one of the few places in the state where towering sugar maple, yellow birch, white ash, hemlock, and basswood have been left to grow, die, decay, and regenerate largely undisturbed for centuries.

We were there to revisit a long-term monitoring plot established decades ago and to measure the diameter of trees tagged as early as 1977. With me were ecologist and naturalist Charlie Cogbill, our leader, NEWT board member Brett Engstrom, NEWT’s Wildlands Ecology Director Shelby Perry, and Rose Paul, former director of Science and Freshwater Programs for The Nature Conservancy. We slowly and systematically worked our way across 50-by-20 meter grids, calling out data while Charlie stood at each grid’s center, clipboard in hand, scribbling notes, and confirming each measurement with familiarity and enthusiasm.

“Yellow birch. Tag number 451. Diameter 72 centimeters!” I called out across the talus slope, my voice bouncing off of moss-covered granite boulders.

Charlie, perched atop one such boulder, flips through his notes. “Yellow birch… 451… YES!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “That one put on four centimeters since 2002,” he added, grinning.

Charlie knows these woods better than anyone alive. His career spans nearly five decades. A forest ecologist by training, his work helps shape how we understand the natural history of the Northeast. From piecing together colonial-era land survey records to monitoring long-term field plots like Lords Hill, Charlie documents what remains of the region’s ancient forests and how they continue to evolve. In 1990, he helped locate and measure more than 700 trees on this hillside that were originally tagged in 1977—tracking their growth, recording mortality, and observing the gradual unfolding of ecological succession.

And yet, when considering the centuries these trees have endured, even his presence felt brief by comparison.

Surrounded by towering, seemingly immovable giants, it was easy to forget that everything here is constantly changing. When these gargantuan hardwoods fall, their downed trunks rot and decay, becoming moss-covered nurse logs that nurture a new cohort for decades.

Even the rocks are in motion. As winds on the hill gusted over 30 miles per hour, Shelby paused and said, “Do you feel that?” A deep thumping rumbled beneath our feet: the root systems of massive trees swaying in the wind, heaving the granite boulders beneath us.

Measuring a yellow birch tree in a forest

Two people standing in the woods with a big birch tree

Some of the trees we measured have grown just a few centimeters in diameter over two decades. Some now reposed on the forest floor, providing habitat for innumerable plants, animals, fungi, and slime molds. The progress of their decay, the state of their remnant stumps, and the orientation of their trunks offered clues to the timing and manner of their demise.

At lunch, Charlie and Brett swapped stories from their years exploring remnant old-growth patches across the Northeast, from the Adirondacks to the White Mountains. “That’s beautiful country,” Brett said between bites. They spoke with the reverence of those who have spent a lifetime walking in the woods, recalling places not from photos or data sheets, but from memories and careful observation.

Old Growth Forests in Vermont

Old forests like Lords Hill are rare in Vermont—scarce, patchy, often remote. Most forests in Vermont were cleared by the 1800s. Today, less than one percent of the state’s forests can be considered true old growth. And while the unfettered deforestation of the nineteenth century may be in the past, many properties NEWT now conserves were logged extensively in recent decades. It may be centuries before the forests on these properties can be considered “old,” which we generally define as characterized by large trees, multiple age classes, diverse structural complexity, and abundant coarse woody debris.

In this context, places like Lords Hill are both time capsules and living classrooms. They offer a preview of what many of NEWT’s preserves will one day become. As part of the next generation of forest ecologists, we carry a responsibility to help realize that vision of a Northeast once more blanketed by old forests.

Perhaps as rare as the ancient trees themselves are the people who dedicate their lives to studying them. People like Charlie, Brett, and Rose won’t monitor these forests forever. For a forest to grow old, it must outlast us all—changing and adapting on time scales we can barely grasp. NEWT staff often say we work on “tree time,” rather than human time. With each passing decade, and each rising degree in global temperatures, this knowledge becomes even more important. That’s why days like this one matter. We’re not just collecting data—we’re carrying on a legacy and learning to see the forests of the Northeast through the eyes of those who know them best, who play a critical role in their persistence.