MONTHS BEFORE the media began their daily coverage of the so-called "energy crisis," Harvard was undergoing one of its own.

No, the lights in Holworthy had not begun to dim, and the heat still coursed through the steam tunnels. Harvard's personal energy crisis came instead from a tract of forest located near Cornwall, N.Y.

The land--3600-acre Black Rock Forest--was bequeathed to the University by Ernest G. Stillman '08, upon his death in 1949, to provide a field center for forestry research. Now, 24 years later, Black Rock has become a variety of things to a variety of people.

Some futurists see the forest as a potential escape for coming generations from the harried life of New York City, only 50 miles away. Others feel it could provide important data on the effects of pollution on natural areas.

But for Consolidated Edison, the New York power utility, at least 240 acres of the forest is seen as another possible stumbling block to the company's construction of the controversial Storm King pumped storage power project, which has been tied up in legal action for over ten years. And for Harvard, Black Rock is potentially another point of contention in the already beleaguered area of responsibility in University holdings.

The Black Rock controversy, which has been building momentum since last year, has focused upon two areas: first, Harvard's responsibility to the environment; and second, its responsibility to its benefactors.

The University remained largely in the background of the controversy as the dispute progressed through its first nine years of litigation. "The general attitude has been 'keep out of it,'" Martin H. Zimmerman, director of the Harvard forests, said last year, "because no matter what they do they'll be blamed for it."

But Harvard lost to some extent its ability to "keep out of it" in February 1972 when, following an unfavorable court decision, environmental groups looked to the University for a commitment not to sell its land to Con Ed and to fight any attempts to take it by eminent domain.

"If Harvard were to announce that it did not intend to give up the land and would fight in court if necessary, it might find itself with enough allies to break the project," Rod Vandivert, an environmental consultant for Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference, said last year.

IN SOME SENSE, the move already had precedent: President emeritus Nathan M. Pusey '28, had already expressed a commitment to both the protection of the environment and the interests of Harvard's benefactors in 1964, two years after the official announcement of the Storm King project.

In a letter to The New York Times, Pusey stated that he and the trustees of Black Rock Forest "are deeply concerned with preserving intact this important scientific area. Unless Consolidated Edison can demonstrate that there is no alternative to this radical proposal for altering the scenic beauty and scientific value of a largely unspoiled section of the Hudson River Valley, we wish to ally ourselves with The Times and with the individuals and organizations who are protesting the plans of the Consolidated Edison Company. It is our hope that an acceptable alternative can be found."

As late as 1970, he reaffirmed this position in a two-sentence letter to a member of Scenic Hudson, which from the beginning has been the Storm King project's most active opposition. "There has been no change in Harvard's attitude about Black Rock Forest," Pusey wrote. "We have no desire to have land under our trusteeship used for the purposes proposed by Con Ed."

It was with the changing of the Administration in 1971 that the University's policy toward Black Rock changed--or, more accurately, ceased to exist. According to one Administration source, "President Bok didn't even know we had a Black Rock Forest until he read about it in The Crimson."

In crisis-handler fashion, Bok quietly appointed a committee in May 1972 to study the controversy. And its report, issued in January, lit a new match under the Black Rock debate, which had been smouldering quietly since the previous Spring.

The report acknowledged the possible environmental dangers that Storm King opponents had been citing for years--the possibility of massive fish kills, potential danger to the Catskill Aqueduct which supplies 40 per cent of New York City's water, damage to scenic beauty.