Planting an ?enchanted? forest By Robert M. Downie Looking west from Center Road in 1957 ? a view of the Nathan Mott Park just 15 years after the park was created in 1942. In 1961, 13 acres of the land in the foreground were taken by the state for the erection of approach lights, adding to the 21 acres they took in 1949. In the distance on the right, the beginnings of the Enchanted Forest can be seen as a long, low rectangle on the ridge top. The stone wall in the right foreground ? with two large, obelisk-like boulders that form a grand entranceway ? once led to the ancient homestead of the Rathbun family, from whom all the Rathbuns, Rathbones, and Rathburns in the country are descended. The stone wall, which is now overgrown with brush, is on land the state took. Earl Dodge planted the Enchanted Forest in the 1940s on land given to the public by Lucretia Mott Ball, a fellow Block Islander. Earl, born William Earl Dodge, was called by his middle name to distinguish him from his famous father, William Talbot Dodge, a ploy hardly necessary since everyone called Earl?s father by the name "Tal," and no one called either of them "William" or "Bill" or anything at all to do with their first names. The senior Dodge was a pilot, making headlines from 1900 to the 1930s for, amongst other things, jumping off Block Island ferries to guide ocean-going ships up into Narragansett Bay, and sometimes piloting in the dark and fog, when lesser pilots couldn?t or wouldn?t. Lesser pilots, and that means all the pilots on the mainland, didn?t like him. That is, they respected him and told glorious stories of him, but they didn?t like him getting the best pilot jobs by getting to those ocean-going ships before they could. First pilot to hail a vessel was the pilot who got the job. Earl, one of Dodge?s two sons, set up a miniature golf course on Dodge Street in 1931. The tiny fairways ran all around the lawn on both sides of today?s Red Bird Package Store (see photo on Page 4 of the book "Block Island?The Sea"). But Prohibition ended in 1933 and the liquor store was built soon afterward by someone else, ending miniature golf. In the mid-1930s, island residents began planting trees. Arbor Day, the nationally celebrated tree-planting ritual observed nationally on the last Friday of April since the 1880s, had finally taken root here. In the 1930s, lovely rolling pastures still ran across the island, unfettered by nothing more than stone walls and a few score of farmhouses. That was the Ireland-like landscape of moors and green that inspired tourists to return and return, but some decided that trees should be planted, somewhere. Earl Dodge usually supervised these tree-planting efforts, enlisting the aid of local schoolchildren, as well as youth groups from the mainland. He was born in 1889 and lived to the age of 86. At a time when students often did not even finish four years of high school, Dodge did just that, then went on to graduate from Cornell University and begin his professional life as a civil engineer. In 1941, Lucretia Mott Ball, the most prominent person of her time, died at the age of 64, leaving a will that decreed "my farm on Block Island known as the ?Nathan Mott Farm? shall be converted into a public park to be named the ?Nathan Mott Park.?" It was Ball who, as a young 25-year-old, led the efforts to bring Rebecca to the island in 1896 and place her in the middle of Water Street. An effort to replace this deteriorating statue is now well underway. Ball had owned the Ocean View Hotel, the largest business on Block Island, as well as several other properties. But the farm was where she grew up, and she left it to the public to honor all her island neighbors, her island heritage, and her father, Nathan Mott. The Nathan Mott Park Corporation ? a group of Block Islanders named to manage Ball?s bequest that included Earl Dodge ? first met in June 1942, and at that initial meeting ordered that the farm?s pastures be mowed. During the next few years, Dodge led the efforts to plant trees at prescribed places in the park. A large stretch on the western ridge received the most attention, eventually turning into an outright woodland of varied species, mostly evergreens, that in a decade or so came to be known as "The Enchanted Forest." In 1948, the high school students, assisted by Dodge, planted 175 sycamore maples and sugar maples. A border was formed around much of the perimeter, with the maples spaced at 20-foot intervals. They are still quite obvious, most notably next to Old Mill Road and along the park?s two boundaries perpendicular to Old Mill Road. But neither trees nor good intentions could save the park?s 77 acres from being converted to other uses. In 1949, the state took 21 acres (on the east side of present-day Center Road) to form the end of the runway for the airport that was soon built and opened in July 1950. In 1961, another 13 acres was taken (on the west side of Center Road) to place approach lights along the flight path leading to the runway. Ball?s legacy to her fellow islanders was the first setting aside of open-space land since the settlers came in 1661. But less than 50 years after she died, her park had been literally whittled in half by others. Of the original 77 acres of the Nathan Mott Park, only 40 acres are left. In the 1990s, the Nathan Mott Park Foundation, which met little during the later decades of its existence, allowed the Block Island Conservancy to take over ownership of the remaining section of the parkland. The part of the Enchanted Forest at the northern end of the ridge was hit hard by the wind and salt spray of Hurricane Bob in August 1991, and the so-called Perfect Storm of late October that same year. Along with the storms, the damage caused island-wide by beetles that feed inside the bark of certain pines, resulted in the many dead trees now visible. There?s an old adage, "You can?t see the forest for the trees." But when the trees start to fall, the forest becomes more visible. And with a clearer view of what we have ? and once had ? comes a deeper appreciation for what is left. Quite enchantingly, what remains becomes more precious than the greater amount we once had. The forest still casts its spell.