The Old Beech Tree HERE IT STOOD, over three feet in diameter, worn and tired with its dying gray bark only partly covering its trunk, only remnants of what it looked like a century and more ago. It towers like a behemoth over the pole stage timber surrounding it on the small knoll overlooking an 18-acre wetland to its west and a large hardwood stand to the east. To the north is a 4-acre patch of overgrown thickets that tear at your clothes as you attempt to bust your way through. This combination raspberry patch and multiflora rose thicket is a haven for cottontails, turkeys and deer. T A small creek with its origins in the hardwoods to the east meanders along the south edge of the woodlot the big beech is in. The creek empties into an 18-acre pasture reverting back to thickets and small saplings interspersed with wetlands that breach its west side. The broken down and rotted fence posts with rusted barbed wire, some still clinging to the fence posts and the rest consumed by the forest floor are evidence that cattle once used this pasture decades ago. Patrolling here one early autumn afternoon during the archery season I By Mario L. Piccirilli Crawford County WCO artwork by carrie andraychak SEPTEMBER 2009 23