Although all trees have the power to stir our emotions, there may be not one more powerful at conjuring up the original passion for freedom of the revolutionary American pioneer than Pinus strobus, the virgin White Pine. It was a tree so wild and vast in its groves, so airy and strong in its structures, so wasted and exploited in its economy, and so direly desired by the enemy that there could be no more American tree than it. The white pine stoked the fire of the American revolution, and held up the early American colonial economy with its board feet.

In Donald Culross Peattie’s masterpiece A Natural History of North American Trees, he notes that the white pine tree covered a vast expanse of the northeastern United States, existing many times in pure stands and of heights much greater than the second growth stands we know today.

In fact, the white pine tree may very well have birthed some of the first contract climbing arrangements in modern history, directly tied to the lumber industry and for the acquirement of data and logistics through the scope of capitalistic venture, no matter how primitive.

“It was possible for the old ‘land lookers’ or ‘timber hunters’ or ‘spotters,’ as they’re variously called, to climb some lofty Spruce and from its top sight these mighty groves miles away on the horizon-‘clumps,’ they called them, or ‘veins of Pine’ running like sighing rivers through the primeval forest. A branch was thrown down on the ground, to point the direction of the groves, and the way was then found through the trackless wilderness by compass,” (Peattie, 28). Tree exploration and crown access, as a legitimate trade, has held a slice of history for at least as long as the early American wilderness was explored. And so the spirit of the wild, wily contract climber is born out of the seed of the white pine, under the gaze of its vast clusters and in the cold shade of big business and an early whisper of capitalism.  And I can only infer that so too was the limb toss and the ‘stand clear’ audible born under the primeval shadow of the white pine forest as well.

Culross also tell us that perhaps it was Captain George Weymouth of the British Royal Navy that first brought the tree to England after rummaging up one of Maine’s rivers. “Away with him he took specimen logs of mastwood, and seeds of young trees. These were planted at Longleaf, estate of Thomas, Viscount Weymouth, second Marquis of Bath, since then the English have called our tree the Weymouth Pine. But it has never proved adaptable to the English climate. Only in its own country was White Pine destined to a great role,” (Peattie, 29).

An arboreal patriot if ever there was one.

It is the white pine, after all, that proves how unsustainable this desperate new America was. But maybe it was the cost of freedom, so the unfortunate argument will have to be. In order to make a living in a young world, although we may not think of those early centuries as such, it was important to find leverage at home for doing business in far away places with the enemy of the enemy. That leverage was the high and mighty timber of the white pine, a tall spar pole upon which the early American economy was rigged.

“Certainly it was the first gold that the New England settlers struck. The exploitation began immediately and was so intensive that it was soon necessary to pass our first forest conservation laws…It was not the wood needs of the puny colonies which threatened this great resource, but the fact that, aside from fish and fur, timber was the only great export of early New England. Within thirty years she was selling her White Pine not only to England but to Portugal, Spain, Africa, the West Indies, and ultimately even densely forested Madagascar,” (29).

It could very well be that America’s seat at the table of global trade was carved from one solid block of White Pine.

What’s microscopically interesting about the white pine’s attracting qualities, and of course the arborist in all of us will understand, is its bio-mechanical properties. It’s wood is interesting as a physical entity. The White Pine, in regards to the tree’s strength-to-weight ratio, makes the most wonderful ship masts, the tall stallions upon which a navy rides. At the heart of this wood are the special functions of the lignin and cellulose, these unique properties on a cellular level give great value to the white pine as a real maritime resource. And so it’s cellular structure may be the most overlooked quality in regards to its desirability as a natural resource and a military asset. The great size and character of the early white pine is built upon the tiniest of biological miracles.

“Certainly no wood light enough and strong enough for masting was grown in Europe in such lengths. And England, mistress of the seas and forever at war with the other navies of the world, had no mastwood at all. She pieced together her proudest masts out of Riga Fir (Scots Pine- Pinus sylvestris) but Prussia, Russia, and Sweden held monopolies in it on which England was dependent, to her own great discomfort. The Danes had only close the Sound to cut off her supply entirely. So that arrival of the first White Pine masts created a sensation in the Navy Board. Contracts were let at once to American agents like the Wentworth family of New Hampshire, and, with the great mast sticks selling at 100 pounds a piece, it is no wonder that the Wentworths grew rich and occupied a position of political power commensurate with their wealth,” (30).

So, from the natural wonder and awe of the great, untouched, early White Pines rumored at over two hundred feet tall, now only ghosts that linger amongst those storied Northeastern mountains, came the bounty and wealth of a select few. For if the settlers cleared a few for the growing of a sustainable American wilderness dream, the American business agents to England and abroad cleared a few hundred thousand to sit in a high-class room of beautiful and imported carved mahogany, as non-native a wood as one can only fathom. And ironically enough, the great British ships were artistically adorned in White Pine carved by the painstaking hand of American craftsmen. So it absolutely must be that a wealthy view is much better than one from the top of any great tree.

The crown would finally catch up in a serious way in its dealings with the colonists of America, and the fruits of their forests. And with that motion would come the friction of revolution and the desire for wild freedom in a wild land.

“Few historians mention it now, but Eastern White Pine was one of the chief economic and psychological factors in the gathering storm of the American Revolution, at least in New Hampshire and Maine. The trouble began in the reign of William and Mary, when by decree those monarchs began to reserve the grandest specimens for the use of the Royal Navy. In her desperate timber shortage, and her endless wars to keep the seas, the mother country naturally looked on aghast when pioneers, advancing far beyond the land grants, into the ‘Crown Lands’ or royal domain, chopped down, or even burned down the finest trees along with the least, simply to farm the land. It seemed to the British that they were fighting the empire’s battles for the colonists as well as the home country; they could not understand what looked to them like the greed and short-sightedness and refractory spirit of the American pioneers…To the colonists the same facts looked entirely otherwise. What the Crown called Crown Lands, reserved to His Britannic Majesty for sale, perhaps, to London land speculators, appeared to the Americans then (as the wilderness was to do for centuries) as Indian country, theirs for the taking,” (31).

Is this also the beginning of the story of trees and rope and the sea. The great New England rope companies and splicing culture too. Is the great White Pine to blame for this? Or is it just the salt of the Atlantic at work? The connection is quite skeptical from a historical context. Nonetheless, the white pine is the tragic story of a natural wonder and the birth of a new nation. After all, the sea and the forest are the two greatest wildernesses on earth at least. The arborist is but a close cousin of the sailor in both necessity and industry: a yearning to live on nature’s love, to ride on the wind and dance to the music of a spinning earth.

In 1761 there was a clause introduced into all future land grants in America by the Crown reserving all suitable white pine trees to the masting of the royal navy, and only with license could those trees be cut and harvested, right down to the specs of twenty four inches at twelves inches from the earth.

“The first flag of our Revolutionary forces bore for it’s emblem a White Pine tree. But out of Portsmouth, November 1, 1777, sailed the Ranger, Captain John Paul Jones, fitted with three of the tallest White Pine masts that ever went to sea, and from the mainmast fluttered a new flag, the Stars and Stripes, to carry the war to Britain’s shores,” (32).

It is a awe-inspiring story of a natural resource that has affected our country not only in economy but in dichotomy as well. There is an ugly history of exploitation of the White Pine both abroad in the global market as well as at home in the timber trade on the shores and in the forests of our great nation, which is a whole other history in itself. But it is no surprise that a tree once so grand and so influential throughout the world be at the revolutionary heart and soul of a country, flying on the first flag as a reminder that nothing inspires freedom more than mother nature and the creations she bestows upon the earth.