Murdered Tree Takes Revenge on the Trail

The friendly twin oak anchored the trail

Sometimes nature fights back. We had a nice specimen of an oak tree anchoring the Paugussett Trail near the Indian Well - Birchbank border, but in 2022 somebody girdled it and drilled holes for herbicide injection and it's been rotting away ever since. The twin tree, which was holding up the trail on this steep hillside, recently uprooted. One trunk fell away, leaving a 4-foot deep hole in the trail. The other trunk got hung up on surrounding trees, but its unstable root mass was pulling up on the trail tread about a foot. Walking on it was like walking on a floating bog or springs, with the danger of a foot breaking through and dropping into the void. On a windy day, as the surrounding tree swayed, the root ball heaved with the wind and the trail tread rose up and down. See a video of that: https://youtu.be/ZGZst5btaIg

Several hours were spent cutting away the roots of the partly
uprooted trunk so it won't take out the hillside when it goes

Another fear was that when the tree finally falls, it would take out a big chunk of the hillside in a spot with no room to shift the trail over. Hard to see in the photos, but it's very tricky terrain, steep and full of slick ledges. It might make the trail impassible. So some of the roots were dug out and cut away, and dirt from the base of the tree was scraped off to start filling in the hole. The trail tread dropped abruptly when key roots were cut. The tree trunk did not shift when the roots were cut, but the trail sure did! The trail tread had dropped about a foot when the work was done. In the photo above, where the roots are sticking out, that's where to top of the ground was before the roots were cut.

In 2022, someone girdle the tree...

The kicker is that in 2022, when the tree was poisoned, we had just recently relocated the trail further down the hill -- with great effort -- because the house directly up the hill at 73 Hickory Lane had recently cut down all the trees along the trail behind their home. This was presumably to get a view of the Housatonic River, but some of the trees were likely within the state park. So we moved the trail down the hill into the trees and then this happened. Girdling a tree in a state park -- not just a tree, but a blazed tree marking a 90-year-old hiking trail -- is pretty audacious, but they seem to have gotten away with it. Grrrr. 

...and drilled holes for herbicide

To top it off with a cherry, the same house up above is now harboring a big infestation of invasive Mile-a-Minute Vine, which took over after the trees were cut, and is now spreading down the hillside and into the state park for hundreds of feet. It would take over the trail (can grow up to 6" in a day) and so it needs to be monitored and pulled several times during the summer. So much extra work made necessary by one abutting landowner: The trail reroute, repairs for the tree that was killed, and pulling invasives. 

Follow-up 12/21/2025: During a big storm, the leaning oak finally took out the tall hemlock and another tall oak and came crashing down, dropping some limbs on the trail while it was at it. The trail was nearly impassable, so emergency repairs ensued the Sunday before Christmas. The limbs were cut up quickly, but the root ball took out part of the trail. It could have been much worse, but the earlier work severing some of the roots and scraping off dirt helped minimize the impact. A decision was made to move the route down into the hole. Complicating the issue was newly exposed ledge that was seeping water into the hole and turning everything into a morass. Some nearby flat rocks were used to create a bridge, allowing water to drain away. The top several inches of soil was frozen solid, but a lot of swings with a grub axe were able to get the trail to a passable state. Additional work will be needed after things thaw out, probably next spring. 

After the second trunk fell, the trail was blocked

The trail was moved down into the hole