The Butterfly Vote : Chapter 1

The American Chestnut Tree

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In the eastern part of North America breathes a gracefully modest band of ancient mountains called the Appalachians. One of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth, the Appalachians are roughly ten times older than the youthful Himalayas, which stand flamboyantly on the opposite side of the globe. Though both ranges stretch identically for 1,500 miles, the still growing Himalayan peaks dream of merging with the heavens, while the aging Appalachians contentedly recede further from the sky each year. 

But do not be deceived by their gentle, green appearance. These mountains once towered as menacing titans, their gigantic summits draped endlessly in sheets of ice, even surpassing the current Himalayan range. Like everything on earth, though, those imposing peaks suspended high in the frigid atmosphere were helpless to fend off unrelenting time. Armed with gale-force winds, intense precipitation, temperature extremes, and the downward pull of gravity, time, like a patient sculptor, slowly carved down those seemingly invincible granitic gneisses, nearly leveling them to the ground. 

Then, through periodic continental collisions, time uplifted the rocks, once again forging a sky-piercing range, the Himalayas of the Paleozoic era. In fact, the area now known as Georgia, the southernmost part of the Appalachians—and the place where this book’s story unfolds—once housed a shear zone where the ancient supercontinent Gondwana pushed atop the proto-North American continent, similar to the ongoing collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates that continues to uplift the Himalayas today.

These mighty mountains, too, were eventually worn down, only to have the rocks beneath the land thrust up once more by the immense forces of one massive tectonic plate. Time then took up its chiseling tools yet again, shaping the present-day Appalachians with their unassuming heights and features. All these transformations have played out over 480 million years—and still, the story of these mountains continues to be written.

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No need to despair about the current size of the Appalachians, however. Time’s painstaking molding of the range has fortuitously crafted, as if to feast our eyes and feed our imaginations, handsome mountain landscapes framed with lush forests, ravines, ridges, slopes, and valleys. Best of all, anyone with a pair of good hiking boots can easily venture into the deep interior to marvel at the pristine, verdant composition. John Muir, the 19th-century Scottish-American naturalist renowned for his conservation efforts, upon exploring the mountains of North Carolina for the first time, left this glowing evaluation of the Appalachians for future visitors: “The face of all Heaven come to earth.”

Named after the Apalachee Native American People by early Spanish explorers, the Appalachian range stretches colossally from the American Deep South to deep eastern Canada, running mostly straight with one quirky bend as it traverses three countries and ends in Newfoundland, just beyond the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a remote French enclave surrounded by Canadian waters.

If you were to visit these islands, you would set foot on European soil without leaving North America. The voyage to this far-flung location is arduous, but you would soon forget all about your travel fatigue when you experience the quaint charm and natural scenery of this small archipelago—eight lonely, windswept islands vulnerably afloat amid the intimidating waters of the North Atlantic. Each isle, some connected by a narrow tombolo, will offer you serene hiking trails with panoramic views of the rugged landscape: scattered craggy rocks, sparse vegetation, moors, and peat bogs. From the top of a nearly barren hill, part of an Appalachian subrange, you can gaze out—your eyes squinting against the unbroken gusts of howling wind—and see the whole town of Saint-Pierre resting gently on the water.

Most of the archipelago’s population resides in that town, the region’s epicenter, where French flags, signs, and cars decked in French license plates are impossible to miss. And the pretty vista of clusters of wooden houses, their brightly painted facades and roofs huddled together along the coast, would seem to have popped straight out of the fictional seaside town in Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service. While strolling along the sun-soaked harbor, you might just look up at the blue sky, half expecting to stumble across young witch Kiki—with her giant red hair bow—streaking across the white cotton candy clouds on her yellow-green broomstick, her black cat Jiji perched on her orange messenger bag. Of course, she won’t be there, but later that morning, you could stumble upon a local bakery serving freshly baked croissants and pain au chocolat, the taste of which will leave a sweet imprint in your memory. 

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The Appalachians also boast the world’s longest hiking-only trail, the Appalachian Trail, stretching from Georgia to Maine and spanning approximately 2,190 miles—though its length can vary slightly each year due to reroutes or modifications. Thus, in some years, the trail’s total distance can be nearly identical to the moon’s diameter of 2,159 miles. For the average backpacker aspiring to complete the thru-hike (walking the entire course in one continuous journey), a feat that takes about six months and demands dogged determination and unflinching patience, the distance feels even longer. It’s no surprise that out of the 3 million visitors to the trail each year, only 0.1% attempt the thru-hike, and even among those, only a few hundred ultimately succeed.

For thru-hikers, though, an exquisite variety of Appalachian landscapes awaits: the sylvan beauty of emerald-green mountains and primeval forests, idyllic small towns, scenic rivers, and sun-dappled waterfalls. They will traverse winding dirt roads, smooth asphalt paths, and even dangerous state freeways, though the majority of the trail lies deep in desolate woods, marked only by the faint traces of daring, kindred souls who have walked the path before them.

The trail paths may mostly be devoid of people, yet the traveler is never truly alone. A richly diverse array of mammals, mostly hidden from human eyes, breathes the same clean mountain air as the hiker. In the clear skies over the Appalachians, Cooper’s hawks and bald eagles hover in search of prey; a plethora of small birds, such as black-billed cuckoos and magnolia warblers, flutter through the dense forests of mixed coniferous-deciduous trees. Just in the mountains of North Carolina alone, there are more than 250 species of birds. The hiker might even be entertained by flying squirrels—eccentric animals capable of gliding long distances between trees—skillfully navigating the forest canopy.

In addition to its wildlife, the Appalachians also harbor a lush, diverse group of tall, sturdy trees—some 160 species—that flank both sides of the trail, keeping the lonesome traveler company. In the southern and central sections, spruces, eastern hemlocks, eastern white pines, white and red oaks, and Fraser firs dominate the landscape. In the northern portion, where winter is long and harsh, trees that can endure the biting cold winds—maples, birches, and balsam firs—stand resilient, offering quiet strength to the weary adventurer approaching the final leg of their journey.

During the fall, the Appalachian trees turn into landscape artists to paint some of the world’s most splendidly colorful autumn scenes. A hiker walking the trail at this time is often distracted by the breathtaking, awe-inspiring display, frequently compelled to stop and admire “the face of all Heaven come to earth.”

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But trekkers traversing the Appalachians at the dawn of the 20th century would have encountered forests with a very different floral composition. Until about 120 years ago, roughly a quarter of all trees in the Appalachians were American chestnuts. These trees grew rapidly, reaching sizes larger than any other chestnut species in the world, with fully matured trunks averaging 9 feet in diameter and standing 90 feet tall.

People in those days waxed lyrical about how the ridges were so densely packed with towering American chestnuts that when the trees’ flowers bloomed in June, turning the canopies white, it appeared as though the entire mountains were blanketed in snow. In the fall, the trees rained down so many spiny chestnut fruits that people, mammals, and birds alike could sumptuously gorge themselves on the extra-sweet chestnuts until winter arrived. Even the timber was highly prized for its rot-resistant properties and straight wood grain—perfect for building durable houses, barns, and fences.

The demise of the American chestnuts is attributed to a plant pathogen called Cryphonectria parasitica. This fungus arrived in the Appalachians with foreign chestnut trees that began to be imported into North America from Asia and Europe in the 19th century by unsuspecting horticulturists, who planted, raised, and sold them to people seeking non-native, uncommon plants for their backyards. 

Human imprudence proved catastrophic to the American chestnuts. The blight caused by the external fungi was a devastating disease in which the pathogens attacked the stems and branches, cutting off sap flow and slowly rotting and withering the entire tree, leaving only the roots intact. Unlike the Asian chestnuts, which had strengthened their immune systems by battling these harmful fungi for millions of years, American chestnuts were left defenseless.

As a result, several billion American chestnut trees, stretching from Canada to the southernmost tip of the United States, many of them centuries old, were wiped out by the mid-20th century. Government officials, plant biologists, and the general public in both the U.S. and Canada banded together to desperately save the trees, but to no avail. Scientists have called the American chestnut blight the greatest ecological disaster involving a plant species in human history.

According to old records, American chestnut trees in the southeastern states were already starting to die for reasons unknown by the mid-19th century. In the 1830s, the U.S. government initiated policies to forcibly displace numerous Native American Nations in the Southeast, including those in and around the Appalachian regions who had inhabited the area for millennia. Tens of thousands of Native Americans lost their homes, and many perished from cold, disease, and starvation during the long, arduous marches to the Oklahoma territory. When the once-sturdy American chestnuts—providers of durable wood and delectable nuts—began to sicken not long after the expulsion of the Native Americans, rumors spread among the region’s residents that a curse had been cast on the southern woodlands for the inhumane way the Indigenous people were driven from their ancestral lands.

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Yet, despite everything, and rare as it may be, people have spotted American chestnut saplings hidden deep in the woods throughout the past seventy years. Well, would you believe me if I told you that I also, when I was young, laid eyes upon a living American chestnut sapling?

But the tale I’m about to tell isn’t about that rare encounter. It’s about an equally remarkable event that transpired on the very day I was led to that elusive young tree in a secluded forest not far from the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.