A new forestry practice is confounding hikers deep in the woods of Orland. It’s strange. It’s ugly. But it’s working. I recently stumbled upon it while hiking Great Pond Mountain and Oak Hill in Orland, in a swathe of conserved land known as the Wildlands. And all I could think was: What on Earth happened here? Throughout the forest, trees were sawed off a few feet above the ground, leaving thousands of hip-high stumps. …So I reached out to the landowner, Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust, and was fascinated by the explanation. High-stumping is a forestry method used to get rid of diseased, canker-filled beech trees. “By cutting up high, the root system thinks there’s still a tree up there and doesn’t root sprout,” said Landon Fake, the land trust’s executive director. “It continues to send nutrients up the trunk.”