A Christmas Song

Revitalizing Our Forests

By Bernd Heinrich, New York Times Op-Ed Contributor

This Christmas season, I am roasting chestnuts by the fire. American chestnuts, to be exact. These nuts, once widespread, were almost wiped out by a fungal blight. For a century, most of the chestnuts we eat, like the sweet Castanea sativa variety, have been imported from Europe and Asia.

And yet, I have been enjoying American chestnuts for several years now, harvested from some trees that are now part of my forest of 600 acres in western Maine. I planted four seedlings in the spring of 1982. Beyond all my expectations, the trees thrived, and some are now 35 feet tall. I never would have imagined such success; it was a Hail Mary shot in the dark to see if they might grow in the forest where they were once so common.