Sugar maples comprise much of our forest here in north-west Lower Michigan, especially since the emerald ash borer killed all the ash trees and two diseases are killing all the beech trees. The classic ‘maple-beech’ climax forest is gone. This old maple lives a few miles from my house, along a steep trail within the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The park service has placed a bench across from the tree as a resting place, halfway up the hill. I sat on the bench for many hours one October, drawing the tree as the yellow leaves fell gently around me. The centuries-old tree is in a forest ...
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