Copyright berkshireeagle
LENOX — A mammoth white pine whose age rings indicate it was a sapling when George Washington wintered at Valley Forge was felled by loggers yesterday near the Stockbridge town line. The 130-foot monarch, eaten at the core by a fungus disease called red rot, came crashing to the ground within sight of historic Highwood, the house where in 1853 Nathaniel Hawthorne is supposed to have placed the storyteller of his Tanglewood Tales. "It's the biggest pine I've ever cut," said Lenox lumberman Richard L. Borgnis, who has been in the logging business 28 years. He and William J. Zahn of Pittsfield, using a two-man chain saw, felled the tree with pinpoint accuracy between a hemlock and a soft maple standing close together some 30 feet from the pine. Neither the maple nor hemlock was injured. A gallery of a dozen spectators watched. Why? "Well, you don't see white pines this big much anymore," said Borgnis. He said in addition that he invited publicity because the cutting showed the need for removing aged trees from timber stands before disease or weakness makes them dangerous. Within the past year, another massive pine, weakened by the same red rot, had blown over several yards away, he said. Borgnis and Zahn guessed the tree cut yesterday would saw into almost 2,000 board feet of lumber, "almost enough to build a small house." The tree stood along the winding entrance road to Highwood, the estate next to Tanglewood. Highwood is owned by John Mason Harding, a New York corporation lawyer, whose parents, Gen. and Mrs. Horace Harding, live at Highwood year-round. Borgnis for the past 10 years has cut timber on the estate under a management contract with the Hardings. "We've cut quite a lot," he said yesterday, "and it's still nice-looking woods." For sheer girth, the tree fell short of the championship size listed by Morgan G. Bulkeley in his 1969 compilation of big trees in Berkshire County. The pine cut yesterday measured about 11 feet, 6 inches, around. The biggest white pine in the Bulkeley list is a Monterey tree 17 feet, 4 inches, around.
