roman clemente

In 2011, my family bought sixty acres in Potter County, Pennsylvania. The listing said most of it hadn't been touched since the thirties, and I took that as a selling point. That October I was clearing a tractor trail when we dropped a huge dying hemlock near a sinkhole at the back of the property. When the trunk split, the cross-section looked wrong. Most of the rings were even, but the ones from the late sixties were lopsided and crushed to one side, a crooked band running seven years deep. After that the rings went back to normal. I'm not a forester, but I figured the tree had been sick, so I called the county extension office. A man named Gil Fenstermacher drove out that afternoon. He photographed the stump, measured it, and asked exactly where it had stood. Then he looked at the sinkhole for a long time. "Don't cut anything else around here," he said. "And don't disturb the ground until I get someone else out." I was annoyed. We'd paid for that land, and I assumed he was one of those people who think every old tree is sacred. I told my wife he was probably padding his report...