Her friend Kesler, who recently moved to Chester County, said she once lived on land in Virginia that had blighted, stunted American chestnuts. So she wanted to see a full-grown one in person.
Courtney Streett, a Native American and member of the Nanticoke tribe in Sussex County, couldn’t wait for her glimpse.
“The American chestnut had a significant role for indigenous communities here in the U.S.,’’ Streett said. “To have a tree as mature as this one is incredibly unusual and to have the opportunity to see it is really special.”
‘No primeval forest left in Delaware, but this is pretty old’
Two guides from the Delaware Nature Society escorted the hikers in separate groups on a journey that was mostly a picturesque stroll through wide paths and over a wooden bridge that crossed a trickling stream.
At the end, however, it was a steep rugged trudge through weeds and stickers, and over fallen twigs, branches and tree trunks.
“It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere,” guide Joe Sebastiani warned with good cheer.
The tour was the first that the nature society, which owns the preserve, had promoted as a chance to see the American chestnut, and many hikers said they leaped at the chance after seeing or hearing WHYY’s story in September.
The land isn’t open to the public except for special tours, so on this warm late October day the visitors were treated to not only a sighting of the special chestnut, but also to a colorful afternoon through an old-growth forest that literally sparkled with yellows, browns, reds, and oranges.
Sebastiani, who led the group, took time to identify the variety of trees — such as sugar maple, American hazelnut, Eastern red cedar, green and white ash, beech, black oak, and sycamore — plus several towering tulips and a majestic state champion blackgum tree.
“Old growth means that it’s probably been about 150 years since the last time this was cut,’’ Sebastiani explained. “And around here all the forests at one point or another were cut. There is no primeval forest left in Delaware, but this is pretty old.”
The grandeur of some trees, as wide as three feet in diameter and up to 125 feet tall, was testament to Sebastiani’s claim.
Sebastiani also shared his encyclopedic knowledge of the preserve.
He’d stop and point in the distance, once to a small falcon he identified as an American kestrel, another time to a trio of deer bouncing along a far-off meadow.
He explained how an insect is also destroying ash trees, much like the fungus that basically wiped out the American chestnut.
He stopped at a set of rocks created more than a half-century ago as a reflective space for Crawford Greenewalt, a former DuPont CEO who once owned the land.
The group even stopped to soak in the experience as a cascade of leaves fell from the trees to the earth with the pitter-patter of a soft rain.
Then Sebastiani silenced everyone for a few minutes as they crept up an incline where owls congregate. He found some droppings but nobody spotted one of the elusive creatures.
And when he pointed out a persimmon tree with a piece of fruit dangling from a limb, he urged Sheila Vincent to take a bite.
“It’s delicious,’’ Vincent proclaimed.
“Is it acerbic?” one hiker asked.
Vincent said it was a little dry but overall, “it’s very sweet.”
‘We’ll kind of bushwhack our way up that way’
After about an hour, the relaxing waltz was over. Sebastiani pointed up a slope.
“All right. We’re going to go off trail,’’ he announced. “We’ll kind of bushwhack our way up that way a little bit up on the hillside, that sort of dry knoll up there. And we’ll go right up to the chestnut tree through that mature woods.”
Streett soon realized what he meant.
“You lost your path,’’ someone suggested as she struggled upward.
Street took the gentle rib in stride, “He said ‘follow me,’ and I was like, ‘Oh that’s the bite,’’’ she said with a chuckle.
Read More: Delaware hikers trek to ‘middle of nowhere’ for glimpse of rare American chestnut
