Summer 2000 – That first summer the woods looked like this – a dense stand of planted red and white pines, with a few spruce mixed in.  Below it was a soybean field, above was the woods below one of our largest prairie remnants – Big View Prairie.

This is the way the pine woods looked from above – looking down from Big View Prairie.

Fall 2000

It was actually beautiful in the woods – smelling like pine needles, and with a few scattered plants in the ground layer.  The plants I remember were poison ivy and Liparis lilifolia – Lily-leafed Twayblade – a native orchid.

But it was very much a plantation – straight rows of evenly spaced trees.  And it didn’t fit well with our plan to try to restore the land back to the way it was before it was farmed.