We truly have some wondrous scraps of Eden in the Pacific Northwest of America. In Olympic National Park, we have massive spruce trees that somehow survived the blade and were never harvested to make airplanes for Boeing. We have a few oh-so-precious Western Red Cedars with their lemony scent and soft red bark dust. Where I live, we are known for our forest and some old growth trees older than 1,000 years still stand. However, the timber industry took most out of our trees. They clear-cut land and leave behind a scene of genocide - tree stumps and branches baking in the sun. All other life is gone. No bluebells or grasses. No native plants like salal, salmonberry, or osoberry. The company who does this (weyerhauser) replants a mono-forest of Douglas fir trees (because they grow fast and straight and can survive as a mono-forest). They boast about replanting three trees for each one they take and claim they're "sustainable." Then those monoforest grow up so thick, no wildlife can even move between the trees. The soil is never nourished by elk or deer. The trees do not look well and the ground is only covered by needles because it's too dark for plants to grow. The lower branches on the trees are dead because they cannot access sunlight. These mono-forests are a huge fire hazard. Each summer, the West Coast of the United States has a fire season. There are days when we cannot go outside because the smoke is too thick - the landscape is dulled by the haze. We wear masks to protect our lungs.
I know of a wild ancient western Red cedar and I visit her often. How she survived is a wonder as she is surrounded by many crumbling cedar stumps. I've used her boughs as medicine and found big tasty chanterelles growing at her base. I pray she will not be seen as "timber," succumbing to the blade and turned into money - or as they say "profitable board feet."
Our temperate rain forests in Washington are a place of the sacred and profane. Sacred trillium, huckleberries, cancer killing plants, healing tree resins, and soft beds of bright green moss like you've never seen. But, within them lies the profane - huge crumbling stumps of the elder trees that once stood. Our forests once produced a bounty of gooseberries - but those are gone too. As are the condors that once flew over these lands.
And it is a mystery isn't it how certain trees survive the dreaded cut. I was in South Africa recently in the Knysna forest. Almost all the ancient giants were felled in the 1900s by the woodcutters - but a few lonesome giants remain. And they are majestic.
This is a great comment Alissa, an essay in and of itself (and I encourage you to explore these themes in a post of your own - there is much potential here: the ecosystem you describe is fascinating, and its history of mismanagement, infuriating).
Heartily agree with your final line - one day a future generation is going to inherit this earth, I wonder how they will view us?
“Though as a man I inherit great evils and the possibility of great loss and suffering, I know that my life is blessed and graced by the yearly flowering of the bluebells.” Wendell Berry - A Native Hill
Interestingly enough, here in Texas, the flower we wait for each Spring is the bluebonnets. Adapted to the rocky, alkaline soils of the Texas hill country, they can handle frequent droughts and poor soils.
Came here to say this. The bluebonnets are something very special indeed.
Other readers may enjoy learning that it's a beloved tradition in Texas to plant one's small children in a field of bluebonnets at sunset and take photos.
An Oregon native, I've lived in Mississippi the better part of the last decade, but only recently bought property and a house for my family. It's not much (a mossy acre with scattered pines and oaks and an artificial pond), but it's just rural enough to feel private, and for the first time Mississippi is really starting to feel like home.
Our property borders a strip of sickly pine on the west side, beloved of the woodpeckers. From what little I understand of forest succession, the pines probably shot up first after the land was cleared, maybe 70-80 years ago; but as they age and crowd one another, they get stressed and vulnerable and start dying off. We had a bad drought this summer, and the beetles are taking them out fast. The understory, however, is full of young deciduous trees--oak, sweet gum, black cherry, magnolia, and others. The saplings have to fight through a thick tide of muscadine, poison ivy, and invasive Japanese honeysuckle, which choke and kill the vulnerable; I've tried to help them out this spring by removing some of the vines. I don't know if we'll still be here when the old pines leave the land to this new generation, but I'd love to see this narrow bit of forest, so beautiful in the low evening sunlight, mature and healthy.
I have lived in eastern Canada for a quarter century but there are still few things I miss more than an ancient woodland full of bluebells ... I try to time my visits to coincide with their flowering and fortunately have a friend living near Rothampstead in Hertfordshire who can ferry me to enjoy them.
I am lucky enough to have a copy of Oliver Rackham's 'Trees and woodland in the British landscape', Dent. 1976 ppbk. 1981. As I understand it a slim volume from his larger writing, and not easy to get now I think, but containing much magic as well as study. He is very useful on hedges as well. There have been major changes since. A compendium of local follow-on studies could be very valuable. Perhaps the Trusts might provide library copies on loan to enthusiasts?
Mr Rackham is an excellent writer and resource. I was fortunate enough to find a book in a secondhand store in Cambridge that was from his personal library. He writes quite extensively about some of my local woodlands in Essex in his book The History of the Countryside.
That was great serendipity finding the copy! The book I have is in a Field Guide series and has numerous sites many in Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with detailed maps. I looked this afternoon at the entry for Buff Wood in Cambridgeshire that had 29 different clones of elm covering much of the British genetic range. We have seen a major elm disease epidemic since he was writing and it would be interesting to know of the impact at that site. Just one example of interest for local invetigation!
We truly have some wondrous scraps of Eden in the Pacific Northwest of America. In Olympic National Park, we have massive spruce trees that somehow survived the blade and were never harvested to make airplanes for Boeing. We have a few oh-so-precious Western Red Cedars with their lemony scent and soft red bark dust. Where I live, we are known for our forest and some old growth trees older than 1,000 years still stand. However, the timber industry took most out of our trees. They clear-cut land and leave behind a scene of genocide - tree stumps and branches baking in the sun. All other life is gone. No bluebells or grasses. No native plants like salal, salmonberry, or osoberry. The company who does this (weyerhauser) replants a mono-forest of Douglas fir trees (because they grow fast and straight and can survive as a mono-forest). They boast about replanting three trees for each one they take and claim they're "sustainable." Then those monoforest grow up so thick, no wildlife can even move between the trees. The soil is never nourished by elk or deer. The trees do not look well and the ground is only covered by needles because it's too dark for plants to grow. The lower branches on the trees are dead because they cannot access sunlight. These mono-forests are a huge fire hazard. Each summer, the West Coast of the United States has a fire season. There are days when we cannot go outside because the smoke is too thick - the landscape is dulled by the haze. We wear masks to protect our lungs.
I know of a wild ancient western Red cedar and I visit her often. How she survived is a wonder as she is surrounded by many crumbling cedar stumps. I've used her boughs as medicine and found big tasty chanterelles growing at her base. I pray she will not be seen as "timber," succumbing to the blade and turned into money - or as they say "profitable board feet."
Our temperate rain forests in Washington are a place of the sacred and profane. Sacred trillium, huckleberries, cancer killing plants, healing tree resins, and soft beds of bright green moss like you've never seen. But, within them lies the profane - huge crumbling stumps of the elder trees that once stood. Our forests once produced a bounty of gooseberries - but those are gone too. As are the condors that once flew over these lands.
May we be better ancestors than our ancestors.
And it is a mystery isn't it how certain trees survive the dreaded cut. I was in South Africa recently in the Knysna forest. Almost all the ancient giants were felled in the 1900s by the woodcutters - but a few lonesome giants remain. And they are majestic.
This is a great comment Alissa, an essay in and of itself (and I encourage you to explore these themes in a post of your own - there is much potential here: the ecosystem you describe is fascinating, and its history of mismanagement, infuriating).
Heartily agree with your final line - one day a future generation is going to inherit this earth, I wonder how they will view us?
“Though as a man I inherit great evils and the possibility of great loss and suffering, I know that my life is blessed and graced by the yearly flowering of the bluebells.” Wendell Berry - A Native Hill
Interestingly enough, here in Texas, the flower we wait for each Spring is the bluebonnets. Adapted to the rocky, alkaline soils of the Texas hill country, they can handle frequent droughts and poor soils.
Came here to say this. The bluebonnets are something very special indeed.
Other readers may enjoy learning that it's a beloved tradition in Texas to plant one's small children in a field of bluebonnets at sunset and take photos.
I moved from Texas before having children!! Missed opportunity, because those fields are incredible. :')
An Oregon native, I've lived in Mississippi the better part of the last decade, but only recently bought property and a house for my family. It's not much (a mossy acre with scattered pines and oaks and an artificial pond), but it's just rural enough to feel private, and for the first time Mississippi is really starting to feel like home.
Our property borders a strip of sickly pine on the west side, beloved of the woodpeckers. From what little I understand of forest succession, the pines probably shot up first after the land was cleared, maybe 70-80 years ago; but as they age and crowd one another, they get stressed and vulnerable and start dying off. We had a bad drought this summer, and the beetles are taking them out fast. The understory, however, is full of young deciduous trees--oak, sweet gum, black cherry, magnolia, and others. The saplings have to fight through a thick tide of muscadine, poison ivy, and invasive Japanese honeysuckle, which choke and kill the vulnerable; I've tried to help them out this spring by removing some of the vines. I don't know if we'll still be here when the old pines leave the land to this new generation, but I'd love to see this narrow bit of forest, so beautiful in the low evening sunlight, mature and healthy.
I have lived in eastern Canada for a quarter century but there are still few things I miss more than an ancient woodland full of bluebells ... I try to time my visits to coincide with their flowering and fortunately have a friend living near Rothampstead in Hertfordshire who can ferry me to enjoy them.
I am lucky enough to have a copy of Oliver Rackham's 'Trees and woodland in the British landscape', Dent. 1976 ppbk. 1981. As I understand it a slim volume from his larger writing, and not easy to get now I think, but containing much magic as well as study. He is very useful on hedges as well. There have been major changes since. A compendium of local follow-on studies could be very valuable. Perhaps the Trusts might provide library copies on loan to enthusiasts?
Mr Rackham is an excellent writer and resource. I was fortunate enough to find a book in a secondhand store in Cambridge that was from his personal library. He writes quite extensively about some of my local woodlands in Essex in his book The History of the Countryside.
That was great serendipity finding the copy! The book I have is in a Field Guide series and has numerous sites many in Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with detailed maps. I looked this afternoon at the entry for Buff Wood in Cambridgeshire that had 29 different clones of elm covering much of the British genetic range. We have seen a major elm disease epidemic since he was writing and it would be interesting to know of the impact at that site. Just one example of interest for local invetigation!