This is the story of a historic wooden sailing boat and a majestic tree that was growing tall before the American Revolution. It's also about anenvironmentalist whose decisions will affect the fate of both.

It began last summer when a worker on the oyster skipjack

Stanley Norman called Don Baugh out of a meeting in Annapolis. For the education director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the worker had the worst sort of news:

Rot had eaten deep into the Stanley's huge old pine mast.

The skipjack, which dredged the bay from 1902 until its captain sold it in 1989, was among the fewer than two dozen survivors in North America's last fleet of working sailcraft. It is the pride of the foundation's nationally acclaimed environmental education program, a floating classroom whose very presence rivets students' interest on restoring the bay's health.

But for all its merit, the skipjack program is never farther from cancellation than its next major Coast Guard inspection -- and one loomed even as Mr. Baugh headed for the bayside boatyard where the Stanley was under repair.

The Coast Guard had cast a wary eye at old wooden vessels carrying passengers on bay waters long before loose planks sank the fishing boat El Toro last year. Passing a safety inspection can be arduous even for modern fiberglass and steel craft. The foundation might be pushing the limits of both time and money to ready the old skipjack for approval in time for spring sailing -- education programs were set to begin April 15.

And now, probing the rotting mast, Mr. Baugh knew it was not going to be a repair job at all.

The Stanley Norman, for the first time in about 40 years, was going to need a new mast.

A MIGHTY TREE

Now a mast for a skipjack, in this day and age, is not an eas thing to come by.

The boats are designed to carry a huge mainsail, one that can generate power from even light breeze to plow twin, iron dredges through the hard oyster rocks. It takes a mighty tree to make a mast that can handle the load.

Such a tree, usually a pine in these parts, should grow arrow straight and not branch for its first 65 feet, so as to leave the mast free of large knots where rot can start. For strength, the tree must also be big -- at a minimum, close to 2 feet in diameter near the base and a foot in diameter nearly to its top.

A mast tree must not have achieved its stature too quickly or easily, said oldtime skipjack builders consulted by Mr. Baugh. The best trees always came from the poor soils of Dorchester County, rather than the better growing conditions of adjacent Talbot, said skipjack builder Bobby Ruark, who was searching ++ for a mast of his own.

The tree's trunk should be hard and tough, composed of dense, resinous, rot-resistant heartwood, which comes from adding new wood so slowly the annual growth rings are packed at least 12 or 13 to the inch. A pine like that, said Mr. Ruark, will "sound like steel when she falls . . . have a deep color when you cut into 'er and smell like you stuck your nose in a can of turpentine."

But such trees scarcely exist anymore in the forests of loblollys, the predominant large pine in the Chesapeake region. And even those may be as iron is to steel when compared to the old-growth specimens available to mast makers of earlier generations.

Consider the white pine forests of the northestern United States, where trees soaring as high as 240 feet dazzled early British explorers. The Royal Navy constructed special mast ships just to haul the great trunks back to English boatyards, Donald Culross Peattie wrote in "A Natural History of Trees" in 1948. As the original white pine forests were clear-cut and the rich, undisturbed soils that grew them eroded, woodsmen and boat builders came to think there were two distinct species -- "pumpkin pine," acclaimed worldwide for its fine, smooth grain and perfect mast shape; and "sapling pine," which was coarser grained, less shapely and less rot-resistant. Botanists eventually realized, he wrote, "that the only difference was a matter of age; that in our day of second-growth Pine, Pumpkin is almost unobtainable; it was a product of centuries of undisturbed virgin timber growth."

A GNAWING CONCERN

All this and much more, about the qualities and scarcities o mast trees, Mr. Baugh had learned by last fall.

It was typical of him to turn the foundation's dilemma into a learning experience. Tall and athletic, a consummate outdoorsman who often commutes to work by kayak on the Severn River, he has been running foundation education programs for 16 of his 40 years, influencing young environmental educators for nearly a generation.

And he is a man who loves wood.

As some people might scout for antiques or collect fine art, Mr Baugh is always on the lookout for people who need large, old trees cut or hauled from their yards. In his small Annapolis back yard and garage are stacked thousands of board feet of cherry and oak and walnut. He doesn't know what he will do with it all, but it makes him feel good, knowing it's there.

During his hunt for a mast, he immersed himself in reading -- he turned to 1940s manuals on wood by the U.S. Navy, which constructed some 40,000 wooden vessels during WWII and the Korea War.

From Pennsylvania to North Carolina he scoured sawmills and interviewed timber companies, boat builders and other experts on wooden masts and their availability.

But with the Stanley Norman's inspection series already underway, he was coming up dry. At least six other skipjack captains were also looking for masts without success. One who had a spare mast wouldn't sell at any price.

And Mr. Baugh was wrestling with a growing, gnawing question that probably no other skipjack owner had to confront: Any suitable tree was going to be a rarity. Even if he found one, as a committed environmentalist, could he, ethically, cut such a specimen?

"A MAGICAL WOOD"

One by one, he examined the alternatives:

Modern epoxies and wood strips can make a laminated mast high as a skyscraper, he was told. But it would cost $10,000. And historical wooden construction was very much a part of the classroom experience aboard the Stanley; authenticity was a must. That also ruled out using lower-grade timbers, like telephone poles, that are chemically treated to make them rot-resistant.

A Maryland forestry official offered one of the old bald cypress remaining on state lands along the Pocomoke River. Cypress is superbly rot-resistant, but Mr. Baugh declined. He had misgivings about taking from an increasingly rare and protected tree community in the Maryland bay region.

The ultimate answer, many experts told him, was the West Coast's Douglas fir -- light, strong, rot-resistant and soaring to a hundred yards. The cost of buying a fir was prohibitive -- around $6,000 plus several thousand more to ship it by rail. A national wood-products company might donate one; but Mr. Baugh worried about accepting a gift from an industry that sometimes has earned criticism for its tree harvesting practices. And in an age of forests a generation or two removed from old growth, even a fir was no longer a sure bet. Some fir masts installed on boats in the bay region in the last three years were already showing rot.

One alternative remained, though it seemed more tantalizing than real.

If you could find you an old Georgia pine, an oldtime Georgia heart pine . . . well, then you'd have something -- never was no finer boat wood than Georgia pine.

Mr. Baugh heard this over and over from experienced boat builders during his quest. Their reverence for Georgia pine fascinated him, because in his own wood collection he had a timber removed from the old Hanover Street Bridge, which was torn down nearly a century ago. It was said to be "old Georgia heart pine." It was dark with age, dense and tough as oak. You could scarcely drive a nail into it, and cutting it nearly burned out a boatbuilder's power bandsaw.

But you can't find it anymore, not the good stuff, the builders told him. Georgia pine had become, to him, "a magical wood."

In his search for the best mast at the least environmental cost, Mr. Baugh was beginning to think he would have to compromise one standard or the other. Then he spoke last fall with Charles Schutt. While visiting the Stanley Norman with Blaine Phillips, a trustee of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Mr. Schutt said he might be able to help, even donate a tree or two.

Mr. Baugh by then had followed dozens of such offers to dead ends, and dismissed the offer cordially.

Listen, said Mr. Phillips: His friend was serious. His family happened to own 40,000 acres of timber in south-central Alabama.

Mr. Schutt introduced Mr. Baugh to Wilmon Timberlands Inc., which managed the trees for the Schutt family trust. Too bad we didn't know what you needed a little while ago, a forester there lamented by telephone. The company had just cut a tree that was at least 22 annual growth rings to the inch, tall and straight. It was 330 years old. In fact, it had been the Alabama state champion longleaf pine.

Longleaf pine?

Was that what they also called Georgia pine? asked Mr. Baugh.

It was indeed, and there were several more in the same size range growing nearby.

These scattered survivors had matured in an old-growth forest that once stretched from Virginia to Texas. A U.S. Forest Service pamphlet describes the original longleaf ecosystem:

Open and parklike, the massive trees dotted the rolling Coastal Plains in a sea of grass. Gentle breezes, laden with a resinous perfume, rippled the longleaf crowns and generated music, soothing to the ear and slightly mournful.

The longleaf forest supported a variety of plants and wildlife unmatched outside of the tropics, say Forest Service researchers who hope to restore it. From an original 60 million acres, fewer than 3 million remain, and fewer than 1,000 acres are true old growth.

A QUESTION OF ETHICS

Days later, on a plane bound for Alabama -- accompanied by E Farley, the Stanley Norman's former captain and the man who will hew her new mast from a raw log -- Mr. Baugh was at once eager and conflicted.

"The question is, morally, how old a tree am I willing to cut?" Mr. Baugh said. "Certainly not 500 years old, probably not even 300. Any tree big enough and good enough is going to be well over a century, so between that and 300, where do you draw the line?"

He had asked colleagues at the foundation, lawyers, scientists, environmental educators.

"They all say, definitely don't cut an old tree, but no one wants to put a number on how old."

He was thinking 180 years was his personal limit.

"Dad, a really big, old tree is like a dinosaur," his young daughter, Erica, had told him. "If you cut it down, it won't ever come back."

Mr. Farley needled Mr. Baugh a little: Once he is face to face with a big, three-century-old Georgia pine, did he really think his lust for wood wouldn't prevail?

Well, he does love wood, Mr. Baugh said, but he loves trees, too.

And he told how he worked his way through the University of Maryland with a tree company, how he was assigned to remove the last old-growth oak in Annapolis for condos along Burnside Avenue. His eyes were watering as it was felled, he said. He was so distraught he forgot to stop traffic, and the old giant crashed into a lady's car.

They continued talking of big, old trees and how there aren't many left. Lodged that night in Wilmon's guest quarters, talking with company forester Mike Hutcheson, they sat by a pine table nearly 12 feet around -- a single slice from a giant specimen cut there years before. It had been 128 feet high and had made nearly enough lumber to build nearly two skipjacks, Mr. Farley figured.

IN THE FOREST

Mr. Hutcheson picked them up the next morning, after an earl breakfast of grits and bacon. With the warm Alabama morning sun streaming through starburst clusters of foot-long needles high above, the longleafs, many within walking distance of the company's headquarters, looked as good as advertised. Several had trunks nearly 8 feet around.

One of Mr. Baugh's ethical concerns had fallen away during the ride to Wilmon the evening before. Wilmon's lands stood in stark contrast to the pulpwood tracts managed by other companies all around it. The latter were loblolly plantations -- fast-growing monocultures, planted in rows on land that had been clear-cut, ++ bulldozed and fertilized to maximize fiber production. While it is possible to do this with minimal environmental impact, the result seemed closer to a cornfield than a forest.

Wilmon manages for an extensive variety of tree species, sizes and ages, cutting only selectively. Mile after mile, tall pines mixed with big hardwoods, their understories full of magnolias. The company had been praised by the Sierra Club for managing some of its lands to protect an endangered species of salamander. But it wasn't running some "gentleman's forest"; it was earning a handsome return for its investors, we were assured.

Even in such a place, it quickly became apparent that excellent ** masts don't just grow on trees, even ancient longleaf pines. Some had just a bit too much curve in them when Mr. Farley scrutinized them up close; another, picture-perfect at first, had a fist-sized knot hole about 40 feet up, indicating a rotten spot.

After a few hours of measuring and eyeballing the trees, and extracting slender cores from each with a boring device to (harmlessly) examine the annual growth rings, Mr. Baugh had several rejects, a few maybes, and one good possibility.

Then, they came to The Tree.

No one said anything.

It was clear even to a novice that this was superior to anything they had looked at. Dense and massive, straight and tall, it would make a mast and then some. It was growing less than 50 feet from where the 330-year-old state champion pine had stood.

How old? Mr. Baugh asked Mike Hutcheson. Hundred and eighty?

Mr. Hutcheson laughed, knowing Mr. Baugh's ethics were stuck at around there.

"No, it'll go 250 probably."

Mr. Baugh looked at Mr. Hutcheson closely. The forester, it had become clear, was also a man who loved trees. He had his personal favorites, and admitted, "Sometimes I have to slap my head and say, 'Hey, quit looking at how beautiful it all is and get back to work.' "

"Are you going to cut this one if we don't take it?" Mr. Baugh asked.

"Maybe not this one," Mr. Hutcheson replied.

The company had told the Chesapeake Bay Foundation earlier that three-fourths of its remaining old longleafs would be cut because of the southern pine bark beetle, which infests and kills older trees. A few years ago, beetles ravaged lots of big, valuable timber, and Mr. Hutcheson was expecting another cycle of damage.

Mr. Baugh began asking questions: In which direction would the forest giant be felled? Would it be easy to get it to a truck for loading?

It looked like his ethical limits had just stretched by a good century.

He stared at the tree a good long while and turned to Mr. Hutcheson.

"Let's keep looking."

As they left for another part of the forest, Mr. Hutcheson noticed a longleaf he'd overlooked before. It was leaning badly. He would definitely be cutting it.

It wasn't nearly the tree they'd just looked at, but the lean disguised the fact that it was actually pretty straight. It appeared to be 165 years old, maybe more.

It would do, Mr. Farley said.

A GIANT'S LEGACY

It's early February, at the Tilghman Island boatyard where E Farley will shape the new mast.

A truck has just pulled in from Alabama bearing three massive pine logs donated by Mr. Schutt. The Chesapeake Bay 'f Foundation will use the best for a mast and saw the others into planking for the skipjack.

After each log is tested for density and strength, one is a clear winner; but it's not any tree Mr. Baugh recalled picking. A call to Wilmon explains the mystery.

They had decided to cut The Tree. They wanted Mr. Baugh to get the very best mast possible, having come all that way, says a manager reached by telephone in Alabama.

"I'm kind of sorry to see any tree that nice killed," Mr. Baugh now says, philosophically. "On the other hand, I think we may have one of the best masts put in a skipjack in this century."

The night before they'd left Alabama, the stars had twinkled like fireflies through the tops of the big pines limned black and massive against the sky -- like the stars one recalled shining through the sails of the Stanley Norman as she plunged through a Chesapeake night.

Perhaps it is as close to life as a felled tree can come again, being incorporated into the mast and deck and planking of a wooden sailing vessel, wind sailing through the rigging now instead of the boughs.

And the thousands of kids who will board the Stanley in years to come . . . well, the mighty mast is always one of the first things to draw their attention, Mr. Baugh says.

Perhaps some fine stories and some lively ethics debates will spring from this search for a magical wood to transfer its life force into a magical boat. TOM HORTON is The Sun's Chesapeake Bay columnist and author of four books about the Bay.