A group of us unabashed tree-huggers found ourselves the other day hugging — or at least trying to hug — some of Georgia's biggest and oldest trees in the Chattahoochee National Forest.

We (members of the Georgia Botanical Society) were in the Cooper Creek Scenic Area of the national forest near the community of Suches in North Georgia's Union County. This section of the forest has a varied past — some of it never was touched by logging, while some of it was heavily logged and is now recovering, explained our leader, Hal Massie of Macon.

Charles Seabrook / Special (ENLARGE)

Molly Mitchell (front) and Linda Chafin, both of Athens, hug a giant tulip poplar in the Cooper Creek Scenic Area.

(ENLARGE)

Hal Massie and Martha Malone of Macon measure the arboreal elder; the tree is 18.3 feet in circumference.

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Of course, the huge trees — hundreds of years old — that we saw and stood in awe of along the way were among those that had escaped logging operations early in the last century. To see them, we strolled along what some call the Big Trees Trail and others call the Old Growth Forest Trail, which runs parallel to Cooper Creek, a cold mountain stream. The old-growth forest has widely spaced specimens of huge black birch, white pine, hemlock, white oak and northern red oak, but the largest trees are tulip poplars. Storms over the years have broken the tops out of many of them.

The first big tree that we stopped and hugged was a white pine more than 7 feet in circumference. Needless to say, getting your arms around such a tree is nigh impossible. Our next big tree, a tulip poplar, was even more difficult to embrace. Massie had to get out his tape measure to determine its size — more than 15 feet around.

Our biggest tree of the day was another giant tulip popular. Again, Massie had to get out his tape measure. This one measured more than 18 feet around. We sat beneath its huge canopy and ate our lunches. Massie estimated the tree to be hundreds of years old, perhaps as much as 500. "Early Cherokee [Indians] probably camped under this tree," he said. (Georgia's largest known tulip poplar, at more than 21 feet in circumference, is in Oconee County.)

The 1,240-acre Cooper Creek Scenic Area abounds with many other big trees, many of which can be seen from the trails running through the tract. To see others, though, requires leaving the trail for short distances. One section of the scenic area is known as the "Valley of the Giants" for its large poplars.

For more information, visit www.secretfalls.com/hiking/show/64-old-growth-forest-trail.

Hemlocks

While we were awed by all the huge old-growth trees in the Cooper Creek Scenic Area, we were saddened by the plight of the hemlock trees, big and small, along the trail. Nearly all the hemlocks that we examined showed signs of infestation by the hemlock wooly adelgid, a tiny, exotic, aphidlike insect that sucks the sap at the base of the tree's needles, restricting nutrients to foliage. The needles die and fall off. Without needles, the hemlock starves to death, usually within three to five years.

A sure sign of wooly adelgid infestation is tiny white wool-like tufts at the base of hemlock needles. The "wool" is present throughout the year but is most prominent this time of year.

The pest was first detected in the eastern United States in the 1950s in the Richmond area, where it began to spread rapidly in the Blue Ridge and north as far as Maine. Now the very survival of the hemlock tree as a species is in jeopardy. Some scientists say the hemlock, a major component of southern Appalachian forests, could go the way of another once-common forest tree, the American chestnut, which was wiped out by an exotic blight during the first half of the last century and has never recovered.

Several of the hemlocks we saw along the trail the other day were dying or already dead. In fact, nearly everywhere I go now in the 750,000-acre Chattahoochee forest, I see similar scenes. One can't help but wonder what these beautiful mountain trails and the forest itself — especially along the mountain streams — will look like in another decade or so if the hemlocks continue to die en masse.

One hope for the hemlock is predatory beetles that prey on the adelgid. Three Georgia institutions — the University of Georgia, Young Harris College and North Georgia State College and University — are raising the beetles in special laboratories for release into the forest. But funding is critical. Groups like Ellijay-based Georgia Forest Watch are trying to raise funds for the labs. "All three labs are dependent on some combination of gifts, grants and government support," says Forest Watch executive director Wayne Jenkins. For more information: www.gafw.org.

In the sky

The moon will be first quarter on Tuesday, high in the south at sunset, says astronomer David Dundee with the Northwest Georgia Museum of Sciences. Mercury is very low in the west just after dark. Mars is in the western sky just after dark. Jupiter rises out of the east about an hour after sunset. Saturn is in the southwest at dusk and appears near the moon Monday night. Venus cannot be easily observed.