was talking about this in my botany class this past week. the berkshires and CRV are only very recently forested. all these mountains and hills were completely bare until the early 1900s. when colonizers first came they were under the impression that it was all fresh usable farmland. they found very quickly that is was about a foot of soil(if that) and then many, very large rocks and boulders (hence the large quantity of stonewalls in the woods). so after trying to convert the area into usable farmland for crops and realizing this someone recognized that the midwest was much suitable land for crops. we were then left with no trees until people realized that we need to replace the trees.