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Interesting Facts
White pine was a favorite tree of naturalist/author Henry David Thoreau. According to Ray Angelo’s botanical index to Thoreau’s writings, white pine received more mention than almost any other tree. Climbing a tall specimen of white pine altered Thoreau’s view of the world: “We hug the earth — how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree at least. I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine on the top of a hill, and though I got well pitched I was well payed for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before, — so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for three score years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them.” Henry David Thoreau, Walking, an essay first delivered on 23 April 1851 at the Concord Lyceum, published posthumously in The Atlantic Monthly, 9 June 1862, pp. 657–674.