Peter Duinker had been warned, so he knew what to expect one recent Saturday morning. The message from Kathryn Morse, the councillor for Halifax-Bedford ...
Peter Duinker, professor emeritus at Dalhousie University’s school for resource and environmental studies, looks over a fallen hemlock tree in Hemlock Ravine Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022. Duinker says the tree, taken down by post-tropical storm Fiona, is estimated to be 470 years old. - Eric WynnePeter Duinker had been warned, so he knew what to expect one recent Saturday morning.
This one was straight as a die, with lots of dead branches near the bottom on the trunk, making Duinker think that it was a “wolf tree” which grew up mostly alone, with few neighbours vying for space and sunlight. Once hemlocks dominated Nova Scotian forests, but that was before the Europeans arrived, ravaging the woodlands. Today, old growth trees like those make up less than one per cent of the province’s forests.
“You can miss a friend no matter when they die,” he said. “But if they die at 95 or 105 you think, well they have had a long, wonderful life.”The tree’s time had come, anyone could see that. A pattern as old as time itself had reasserted itself. “If you feel bad,” he said of the tree which he first discovered 20 years ago, “you should feel bad in a light way, and it should be fleeting, not something to cry over.”
Instead, he took the 8.5-cm-thick chunk of wood home. With the help a magnifying glass, he counted the visible rings, 80 in all. Then knowing that the trunk, after accounting for the bark, was some 100 cm thick he did some calculations.
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