Ron Bockenhauer sounds remarkably cheerful for a man living among orphans of one of the country’s most infamous ecological tragedies. He resides in the largest remaining stand of American chestnut trees. The straight-trunked giants once accounted for a third or more of the trees covering the Appalachian chain, and wags claimed that a squirrel could go from Maine to Georgia by jumping from chestnut to chestnut and never touching the ground.
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