One of your biggest fears as a landowner is seeing mystery markers and flagging stakes show up on your property. Living near a road with a power line easement running alongside it would certainly indicate potential problems, but as a nature loving land steward I have always been guilty of clinging to every inch of my property like tree roots on a cliff. Unlike West Texas, land in East Texas is divided up into much smaller parcels. And unlike Ted Turner, Greg Grant land holdings are measured in square feet, not square miles.

Thanks to botanist friend Peter Loos, I had been warned that the West Creek bridge on one corner of my property was going to be rebuilt and that I would lose the far edge of my Trillium recurvatum stand. Being wrapped up with my job in Tyler, my farm in Arcadia, and slow, painful work on a PhD in Forestry at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, I really had not pondered the far-reaching consequences of said upgrade.

At first the orange TXDOT right of way stakes did not seem so alarming, because it seemed they were all in the Deep East Texas Electric Co-op right of way, beneath the power lines. But then it hit me. I have seen many rural East Texas roadways cleared of trees as of late, due to safety concerns and regulations I am sure. But the stakes ran from the creek all the way to my house, including one inside my Picnic Pocket Prairie fence on the old community picnic grounds.

Then the letters and maps from TXDOT started to show up. And then, a business card and a note from a contractor about moving the telephone poles. Suddenly things got more serious. My original worst-case scenario was that the strip of tall trees between the Farm to Market road and the power line easement would be removed. I would be heartbroken because I actually tended that strip since I had been admiring the trees along there my entire life. My family lived in Longview, but we would make the hour and a half trip to Arcadia almost every holiday and many weekends to look after my dad’s cows and of course visit with both sets of grandparents. Just after crossing the West Creek bridge, we would spot the big “turtle rock” at the base of the tall trees, round the big curve, and spy my Emanis Grandparents’ old white farmhouse. There would be tea cakes and tall tales for all.

Except for one of only two dogwoods on my property, none of the trees in that strip are rare, just old and sentimental, like me. Just off the top of my head I can recall loblolly pine, shortleaf pine, cherrybark red oak, water oak, white ash, southern sugar maple, boxelder, shagbark hickory, mockernut hickory, and bitternut hickory growing there. All will be gone. I was told that I could harvest the trees ahead of time for timber or firewood if I wished but I certainly could not bear that anymore that I could bear eating a pet chicken for Thanksgiving.

But then I noticed it. One lone orange stake in my woods. What on earth is that doing way over there? And then I was told. The sharp curve that had claimed more than a few cars throughout my life would be straightened in order to make the bridge more visible and the road safer. This meant actually carving into my Trillium Woods, my beloved mixed hardwood forest. Somebody please make it stop!

A number of folks have commented about the curves and swerves in that old road between Garrison and Center. My Granny said it was originally a “pig trail” and was a dirt road when she was a young adult. Before that, the steep banked West Creek was forded by wagons from a trail actually passing through my woods.

Though I played in the forest as a child, the woods have not always been mine. That is one reason they are so special. It took me ten years, three lawyers, and a partition suit to purchase it a decade or so ago. I was determined to never harvest a single tree from these woods and preserve the unique population of Trillium recurvatum there in perpetuity through a conservation easement in the future.

The trilliums are not the only unique plants there. This legacy forest is also home to granite gooseberry (Ribes curvatum), barbed rattlesnake root (Nabalus barbatum), and nutmeg hickory (Carya myristiciformis) all with limited distributions across the southeast. And due to the elevation change from the top of the hill to the creek, there are unbelievably a total of five species of hickory native there including black, mockernut, shagbark, nutmeg, and bitternut. The habit going from dry upland to mesic slope to moist riparian is also home to six species of oak ranging from post oak (Quercus stellata) at the top to swamp chestnut oak (Quercus michauxii) at the bottom.

But when it rains it pours. After meeting with the contractor who would be responsible for the new power poles I found out that I would not only be losing one acre to the highway right of way but another fifteen feet for the new power poles and possibly another 15 feet in addition for tension and guy-wires. That is more than ten percent of the whole forest! This was going to be a serious intrusion. So, then it hit me one night in bed. Two of my largest, most beloved trees in the forest were not that far from the orange stakes. The squirrels and I both dearly love the huge shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) and large white oak (Quercus alba) at the base of the ravine. I marked them with orange flagging tape. I could not bear their removal. Thankfully, the contractor was nice enough to visit, calculate, and see if they could be avoided. At present, I “think” those two are safe.

He assured me they would try to avoid them. It felt a bit like finding out your hands would not be removed when they amputated your feet.

Despite crude mowing and occasional herbicide treatments, even the understory of the old power line right of way will be missed. I used it as a walking trail. It is the only place on my entire fifty acres where pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginifolia) and beaked hawkweed (Hieracium gronovii) were found. Sadly, highline and railroad right of ways are two of the few places left where tiny prairie remnants and original plant diversity still cling to existence.

On my dad’s side of the creek, the old historic dipping vat and natural spring nearby will be lost as well. You can read more about them in Voices From Small Places-Arcadia at the Stephen F. Austin Center for Regional Heritage Research at https://www.sfasu.edu/heritagecenter/9151.asp.

Turtle Rock

Last week I walked the power line right of way and photographed all the trees that would be removed on both sides. I have made that trip hundreds of times salving my soul. Sadly, this was just the opposite. As a rain crow (yellow-billed cuckoo) called nearby, only I knew it was calling for a tempest, not just rain. Enjoy the pictures of the trees in this blog because they are the last photos of them that will ever be made. Even Turtle Rock must go. When Tennyson wrote “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” he was writing about a deceased friend. I know I am being selfish, but I wish I had never loved these particular trees at all.