Concord, Mass.
1910.
June 18
(No 3)
[June 18, 1910]

Devastated woodland
The big Bear Oak burned

  Late this afternoon I walked up the road as far
as Everett Mason's and then turned in on the left crossing
his farm and the back pastures where his fine old chestnuts
formerly stood. Only two or three of them remain
standing and the lumbermen who cut them have utterly devastated
the beautiful pine woods next [to] them on Abbott Lawrence's farm.
In burning the branches and other waste they have seriously
injured if not quite ruined the great black oak in which
a Black Bear was once shot and which Lawrence would not
permit them to cut. Its lower branches are scorched &
leafless and it stands alone in a barren & blackened waste.
The big chestnut and a fine white oak are the only
other trees of any size that were spared in this once
secluded and most attractive piece of woodland.
Most of the country beyond was cut over about the
same time or shortly before that but it was not burned