December 2023
* This is part of a small project of reading essays that focus on landscape and natural history, the idea being to familiarize myself with this genre, and to develop a better sense of what I like and do not like.
This is a short book about the author’s journey into forestry. I’m ambivalent about it. The first part of the book focuses on his own story, which I don’t find particularly interesting or inspiring. I also have to say that the writing is a bit precious – he is fond of invoking Mother Nature, and personifying the forest; he also tries to be lyrical in what seems to me a clumsy and prosaic way. However, once he becomes established in his career as a forester, I find the book more worthwhile: it is a good survey of the today’s thinking in forestry, about both its past shortcomings and its current approaches. But the combination of preachiness, romanticism and clumsy attempts at lyricism will keep me from recommending it to others.
I’m learning, or sometimes being reminded, about the details of succession in forests, and also learning about current approaches to silviculture. I’m also learning more about regional trees — he is based in northern Minnesota – and the ecosystems and habitats that accompany them. I can’t say that I’ve really learned anything re improving my approach to writing about landscapes and natural history, but that’s OK. I am not sorry to have read this.
Interesting bits,
- Sugar maples, and their cousins, Red maples and Boxelders, are coming to dominate northern forests. This is because of the elimination of fire disturbances. Maples grow happily in the understory of Oak and other forests, and in the wake of a disturbance — harvesting, wind, or fire – the maples take over. If there is a regular fire regime, they will be cleared out in their turn, but lacking that, they dominate.
- Aspens are members of the poplar family, and while once regarded as ‘trash trees,’ they have now found a role in silviculture as a way of producing large quantities of fiber for paper. New hybrids can grow to as much as ten feet in the first year, and develop 8 inch trunks within a decade. They can be planted as slips, and are amenable to being grown in fields like a crop. As Bundy argues, given our need for fiber, this seems a preferable approach to producing what we need, rather than harvesting more natural forests. Still, there are many things we do not know about the long term effects of this approach.
- Red pines are also being planted in plantations, and although the early years of a plantation-forest are very much a monoculture, as thinning begins such forests can become more diverse and attractive.
- White Pines were common a few hundred years ago, but their widespread cutting for ships and housing began their decline, and the arrival of blister rust on european white pine seedlings furthered its demise. However, some of the more resistant trees survived, and White Pine is now spreading in the eastern US, taking over the abandoned agricultural fields of the last couple of centuries.
- Fuel. He makes the point that in the early 1900’s the U.S. was well on the way to a ‘wood famine,’ cutting down far more trees than were being planted, and attributes this to the use of wood as fuel. The advent of oil, and the shift of our infrastructure to using fossil fuels averted this famine. By 1980 there were 5 million more forested acres in the US than in 1920; oddly, he does not give more up to date figures, but my understanding from other books is that this trend is continuing.
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