Summary: To Pine Over The Pines

To Pine Over the Pines: An examination of the Heart of Maine When looking out upon the vast pine forests of Maine, consider that you are not looking at bark, or even a tree, but the heart of a living breathing landscape. To say this, one would be considering the trees themselves as a kind of physical pump, one that would be providing blood flow to a body and making them the center of an evolving landscape. This is indeed the case, as the history of this area tells of how nature formed a rich landscape teeming with life, where Native Americans and Europeans survived and eventually thrived. Every drop of water, rock, and human that composes the land, therefore became a part of an interconnected natural system with the trees. A system in which

The general area of Maine would have been devoid of human interaction for much of its geological existence but around an estimated 12 to 20,000 years ago the first homo sapiens began to arrive in North America. Many of these early peoples would have been focusing primarily on their resource needs, one of those being the hunting of large Pleistocene game animals including the infamous wooly mammoth. With this coming change, the Paleo-Indians arrival would mark the beginning of a new kind of landscape in Maine. One that humans would have a dramatic effect on the physical landscape, but the means by which they accomplish this would be influenced by the trees. Looking at these early Americans, a similar interaction can be seen in the migration of Pleistocene mammals, where humans natural need for sustenance lead to the movement of peoples eastward across the continent as they followed the massive beasts. These mammoths were required for their furs and meat and in being sought after they held sway over the movements of humans and how they interacted with their environment. The forests of Maine act similarly, as they too have a unique relationship with