A walk through Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is a journey back in time through a magnificent forest with towering trees as old as 450 years. Some of the enormous tulip-poplars are more than 20 feet in circumference and stand 100 feet tall. The floor is carpeted with wildflowers, ferns, and moss-covered logs from fallen giants.
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born on December 6, 1886 and went on to become a journalist, poet, literary critic, and an editor at the New York Times. A single poem catapulted Kilmer to notoriety, a 12-line poem expressing his dearest affection for “Trees,” written in the year 1913. Joyce Kilmer’s poem was published in 1914 in a collection entitled, Trees and Other Poems. Kilmer enlisted in the war in 1917 when the United States first joined World War I. He served as a sergeant in the 165th U.S. Infantry Regiment. While on a reconnaissance mission July 30, 1918, during the Second Battle of Marne, Joyce Kilmer was killed in action, he was 31 years old.
On the home front, there was yet another war taking place – the assault on the American forest. Uncontrolled, generated by a nations demand for more wood products, the logging companies gladly supplied the country’s request without consideration of the ecosystems.
Thankfully, the logging companies had been mysteriously held off from harvesting these trees until an unexpected time came when the protectors of the forest, the U.S. Forest Service could step in and save this rare ancient woodland.
Of the 13,055 acres purchased by the U.S. Forest Service along the Little Santeetlah Creek basin, 3,840-acres were designated as a protected preserve, dedicated as the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest on July 30, 1936 and opened to the public. It is appropriate that this patriot poet’s namesake became synonymous with the preservation of these giant ancient trees.
TREES
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer, 1913
For more information on Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, please visit www.BlueWatersMtnl.com