Here is my daily beer drinking picture tree farming style. The hat is dopey looking, but the fringe keeps the bugs off. I brought down a bench where I can sit and have lunch, as you can see in the second photo. I have my usual Love’s picture. The price of driving has gone up. Penultimate photo, we got some rocks for the parts of the road that are persistently muddy. Hope it works. Last is one of the plots we will convert to pollinator habitat. It already has lots of what is needed.
I would like to say that I was having the beer after a morning of hard work, but I was doing mostly in anticipation of working.
I went down to the farms mostly to talk the the NRCS folks. They are giving me cost share to establish pollinator habitat and do some prescribed burning. I did do some of the usual vine cutting. The good things about that on a hot day is that you work mostly in the shade of the forests.
It was hot today, the hottest day so far in September. That is a bit ironic, given that it is almost officially fall.
This is my submission for this issue of “Virginia Forest.” They will edit and improve it, but this is the general thrust. This issue concerns invasive species.
What is native? Our bacon and eggs breakfast comes to us thanks to “invasive species.” Pigs, cows, chickens, honeybees, wheat, and apples (Johnny Appleseed was a wholesale purveyor of invasive species) all came from somewhere else and displaced natives. The problem with invasives comes when they disrupt long-established relationships in ways we find harmful. Our tree farms are full of invasive species, wanted and unwanted. Maybe we plant clover to protect soil after a harvest. That same clover is invasive in other circumstances. We fight invasive species like kudzu, multiflora rose and ailanthus, but recall that they came with the enthusiastic support of experts and often through government programs.
We need to develop a more nuanced view of invasive and native. Native is not always better or even really native. Much of the loblolly that we plant in Virginia, for example, comes from genetic stock “native” farther south, modified by select breeding and scarcely resembling the multi-branched, twisted natives of times past. Human activity has changed the game. Virginia’s environment today is far different from 1607. Natives exquisitely adapted to old Virginia may be less appropriate in the future.
This does not imply that we should be unconcerned about invasive species. Their proliferation is the single biggest threat to our forests. Global commerce is increasingly bringing species long-separated into intimate contact, sometimes with catastrophic results. We must be vigilant against the introduction of pests, but know that nasties like longhorn beetles, emerald ash borers, Formosan termites and wooly adelgids will continue to slip through. The rate of natural adaptation is too slow to cope with the rapid introduction of exotic species and altered environments. Humans will need to step in to move some species to new “native” range and work with breeding, even genetic modifications, to protect important species from threats unknown in their earlier evolution. A good example is an American chestnut resistant to the blight that killed whole forests early in the 20th Century; we can restore the tree in its former glory with minimal modification, rather than wait thousands of years for natural selection to produce something else.
Let’s talk options. “Natural and native” is not an option except in isolated areas maintained – ironically – by extraordinary human intervention. “Letting nature take its course” will result in a mess of invasive species in unsustainable and often harmful relationships. Conversely, overactive human management will quickly demonstrate the limits of our wisdom. Recall the kudzu and multiflora rose are with us today because of somebody’s big ideas. There is no single plan. The best choice is what good land managers do: work with natural processes but recognize that the very nature of our work changes them. It’s an iterative, adaptive learning process with a goal of dynamic sustainability that strives not to avoid change but to make it reasonably predictable and benign – simple to say; hard to do. It requires patience, persistence and humility. Details are unknowable in advance, since information is discovered only through experience and often has only local or temporary applicability. It is more a process than a plan, one that relies the intelligence, imagination and innovation of landowners, firms, researchers and government agencies, knowing that none of them will have the answer, but that the many answers will sustain our beloved Virginia ecosystems. Some will not be native.
I love nature but I am beginning to dislike the concept “natural,” applied as it often is to mean excluding humans or human influence, first because it is not possible, since humans influence all aspects of the world, and second because it is often undesirable. Another concept I am starting to dislike is “native.” We hear these two words too often and often together. People talk about protecting a native and natural landscape. What does that even mean?
Many of the landscapes we find most pleasant and sustainable are significantly human-influenced. This does not mean planned in minute detail or interfere all the time. When successful, it is more like a partnership with nature, where humans introduce sustainable factors that change and improve on the natural state.
As for native, we often hear the argument that native plants and animals are more precisely adapted to the local environment.This is often but not always true, but there is an additional factor of environmental change. The environment in North America where many species developed is no longer here. Conditions are different requiring different responses. The native may no longer be the most appropriate for the new conditions. This is especially true of a world affected by climate change. Being a native is just not as important as it used to be, and even in the old days it was a bit of an artifice.
I thought about this walking around Denver’s Washington Park. It is a very pleasant place, full of trees, grass and water. It is also completely unnatural and not native. Absent human intervention, Denver is a prairie. Look at the various pictures. Can you pick out “native” trees? You cannot see many. Almost none of the trees growing so robustly now are native to this spot. We can stretch the definition to include some nearby trees, but consider the catalpa in picture # 3. Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) are planted all over North American and Europe. They are native to North America, but not to Colorado. They are native only in a small area around the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. What about the honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos.) These trees hail from the southern and Midwestern USA, but not from Colorado. I took a picture of some Austrian pines (Pinus nigra). They also grow very well in Colorado but they come from Europe.
A question: is an Austrian pine more of a native tree in Colorado or less than a catalpa? The correct answer is that neither of them is native, but I suspect that many people would rate the catalpa as “more” native because it comes from a place closer and continuous to Colorado. But might not the Austrian pine have greater claim to native status, since its pine relatives are native to the state? Does it matter? Both grow well here.
Of course, we do not welcome all newcomers. The emerald ash borer and the Asian longhorn beetle are horrible, as are zebra mussels, kudzu and woolly adelgid. I would happily welcome their extinction in North America. Of course that also goes for some natives. I don’t think anybody misses the now extinct Rocky Mountain Locust.
Anyway, the terms natural and native are at best imprecise and often not even desirable, and they have been accorded too much respect recently. Our goal should be sustainable using principals and seeking understanding of nature. Native may often be the most appropriate, but there is nothing magical or special about it just because it happened to be here first or from someplace nearby. As for natural, if you define that as not affected by humans, there has not been a natural landscape in North America for around 12,000 years, but we can use principles of nature to make our environment more sustainable.
My first picture is the pond in Washington Park. It was part of the design of a German landscape architect. It is beautiful, pleasant and good for wildlife, but not natural. Well, the big cottonwood in the middle of the picture might have grown naturally on that spot, if there was some water present, but it is unlikely to have grown so big. Next are a row of non-native catalpa trees. Pretty. After that is one of the biggest honey locust I have ever seen, again not from around here. Picture # 4 shows some Austrian pines. They come from a long ways away, but are doing just fine. Last is a picture from Pawnee National Grassland. It is sort of what this part of Denver would be like absent human interference. Humans messing with stuff is not always a bad thing and natives are not always best.
Following Route 191 we found very beautiful ponderosa pines, as you see in the first picture. The Mustang Ridge Fire burned 22,000 acres, mostly of juniper-pinyon pine forest. It pretty much wiped out these and they still are not regenerated. The ponderosa pine seem in better condition.
I have been aware to fire scenes as we have been driving through the West. Some landscapes are much more fire adapted than others, but what they have in common is that they are overgrown and too much fuel has accumulated.
I read an article today, “Interior’s Zinke Demands ‘Aggressive’ War on Fires, Stop Letting ‘Nature Take Its Course.'” This is overdue. There will be fires. They can be postponed but not permanently prevented, nor should we try to prevent them. We need to manage fire. The Forest Service planted big sagebrush, shown in the second picture. The last two pictures are from farther along the road in Wyoming. It continues to amaze me how empty parts of our country still are. We drove for hours at 70mph and lots of the time saw nobody.
Bryce Canyon is very nice, but more a theme park than a wild place. Alex and I went down into the canyon for a short hike. It was pretty easy until the last part.
It reminded me of some kind of science fiction movie, with people trudging up to some high goal. You can see this on the first picture. Next shows some big trees in the narrows. You wonder how they got their starts, but they are impressive. Next two are Alex and me. Last is Alex with some big old ponderosa pines.
Stopped off at the John Wesley Powell museum in Green River, UT. Powell explored the Green and Colorado Rivers in little wooden boats. It was a different experience than people today get going down in rubber rafts.
The museum was small but interesting. One of the corny – but effective – tricks was talking manikins. Their eyes, mouths and arms moved. In Powell’s case arm, singular, since as the robot explained, he lost one arm at the Battle of Shiloh.
Powell is known, if people know him at all, as an explorer. He was also a great naturalist and an anthropologist, and he was a proto-ecologist. The science had yet to be developed, but Powell described the relationships between biotic communities and factors like soils and water.
Hiking on the high and dry BLM land
We got up at the smudge of dawn so that we could avoid the 100-degree predicted heat. We could not go earlier since I was afraid to drive on dirt paved Hole in the Rock Road. It still took us more than an hour on more than 40 miles of bad road, but Alex had a particular place he wanted to be. There seemed to be several similar walks into the void along the way, but I deferred to his wishes.
It was not that bad. I went along to the edge of Coyote Gulch, at a place called Jacob Hamlin Arch. It was cool in the morning and although it got up to 94 degrees before we got back at about noon, it was the proverbial “dry heat” and not as hard to take. Still, even in the “dry heat” I was dripping sweat. I brought along the requisite four liters of water, but drank only one 12oz bottle and I forced that down. I don’t really like water. It is plain. Back at the car I had an ice chest full of Coke Zero, so I figured I could wait and I did. I think this whole hydration thing is overrated. If you are out for only a few hours, you can make do. Those guys at Gold’s Gym with their bottles of water are silly. Get a drink from the bubbler before and after, but you don’t need to slukke down during the workout.
This was a sojourn on BLM land. BLM land is NOT a park and NOT developed with trails, but it was not hard to follow the way. Generations of hikers had set up cairns, piles of rock that you can follow from point to point. Still, this kind of system makes me nervous. There is a lot of territory out there and if you miss one of the connections you could find yourself far away from where you hoped to be.
Alex was confident. He does some sort of orienteering contests with his infantry unit, but I was less than eager to bushwhack through those prickly bushes and up and down steep rock faces. I figure that if there was a better trail somebody would have found it by now. So, I keep to the cairns.
Generally, I have found it advantageous to follow water courses, Around here they are dry and nice paths. Water is even lazier than I am. It seeks the path of least resistance and tends to wear down the sharp and jagged. The way down for water is often the easiest way to get up the rocky rise for humans.
As you see in the picture, I use the ski-style walking sticks. They are wonderful for climbing and crossing rocks. I observe that most people use them incorrectly. I you are pressing straight down, you are doing it wrong. What purpose does that serve? The point should usually be behind you. You bring the stick up to the lead foot and then push from there. You put them in front when going up a big rock or when going down you hold them by the end. They are great for balance. Four legs are more stable than two and you can use the sticks to test the ground in front. Don’t leave home w/o them.
Remember the wisdom: four legs good; two legs bad.
My first picture is four-legged me. Next is Alex on the ridge, followed by a cairn and the arch. Last photo is the crossroads of nowhere.
Prehistoric graffiti
Final post before bedtime. We had lunch at a nice place. Again, we had pizza and again the pizza was unremarkable, but the ambiance was great.
The penultimate photo shows Alex looking at petroglyphs, a kind of prehistoric graffiti. Ironic that all around are signs warning people of the dire consequences if they create any graffiti of their own. I wonder if they ancient authors got in trouble with their parents. The last photo is Alex with the giant lizard. I guess that is sort of the local mascot. The real ones are smaller.
We drove across the narrowest ridge highway I ever used. The picture does not do it justice. There was sheer drop on both sides for much of the way. You can see Alex standing at the edge and I stuck my foot out over the chasm for illustration. On top of it all, it was windy and steep.
Spent much of the day living in the past – the deep past. We started on the trail through time, that went past a dinosaur quarry. They found lots of fossils and some are still there. Alex is pictured with the diplodocus vertebrae. It was a generally peaceful walk.
We also visited a petrified wood park. The fossil trees were like the Araucaria angustifolia I so loved in Brazil, at least that is what they picture showed. You can see what remains of it in the last photo.
Utah in those days was not the dry desert of today, but rather a lush subtropical forest. Deep time.
The ponderosa pine ecology is certainly one of the most pleasant in the world. It is a fire dependent landscape. The ponderosa pine system burns less often than the longleaf, but it is still meant to burn.
They manage the Dixie National Forest well with fire and according to the sign have been doing it for a long time. As a result, you see that healthy and diverse biotic community.
Ponderosa pine can live more than 500 years. For the first century, they have a kind of black bark, but that later turns to an orange-red, so if you see a ponderosa pine with this color bark, you know it is old.
The pictures show some of the open woods. What you really have in a healthy ponderosa pine forest is a forest mixed with a grassland, with all the diversity that implies. You see the desert in the background in the first three photos. The climate varies greatly depending on the weather caused by the mountain and the vegetation shows that.
Third photo shows aspen trees and finally is along the road.
We did a field trip during our urban forestry workshop to see what kind of standing timber could be made into furniture and crafts.
The thing to recall about urban timber is that its primary value is in its uniqueness. It has artistic value. This is the opposite of general timber, which is valued for being consistent. Artists and craftsmen value urban timber for its knots, twists and irregularities. Slabs are a big part of the urban timber market. The slabs are mostly used for tables. Customers like “living edges”, i.e. the rough edge that the tree had when growing.
Personally, I dislike these things, but I am not the customer. The challenge with all unique or artistic products is that they are labor intensive. Even if the wood is free, the time it takes to get the lumber and make it into something beautiful means that there is limited potential to make a living. SOME people do, but most do not. “Don’t quit your day job” may be good advice.
I was thinking about what it means to be art, but I think the better question is what it means to be an artistic or lead an artist’s life. Sometimes the finished “art” is less important than the thought and process that the creator put into it.
My pictures show some of the trees that could be make into artistic furniture. The first is a big sweet gum tree. This is a beautiful piece of timber, but maybe too clean to be art. Next is an oak tree with lots of branches. This would not be a great timber tree, but the irregularity makes it good for art. Then we have a tree with a recovering lightning strike. This would also produce nice shapes. The slab makers like the parts where the branches reach out. Next picture shows a portable sawmill. They can process logs on site. The machine is cutting some yellow poplar, which is not very high quality wood, but made a good demonstration. Last shows some of the slabs that might be make into tables or decorative walls.
I am down in Guyton, Georgia. I learned a few things at the longleaf academy, sponsored by the Longleaf Alliance, but maybe as important was knowing that lots of people are working to understand and restore this great and diverse ecosystem at least to some of its former glory.
The pictures are from Fort Stewart, where they manage 120,000 acres with fire. The management is only in recent decades but fire was always common. They do live fire exercises. These can set off fires.
You cannot stop fire, but you can make choices about when and where. In the past, they had 700 fires a year (almost two a day). Now they are down to about 40.
The first photo is a restoration zone. Notice the no tank logo. Never saw that before. Next is looking up on pole trees. A poles is worth more than any other use for pine, but it has to be the right size, straight w/o defects. Longleaf make good poles, but not every tree qualifies. The last two pictures show longleaf savannas. They are not that old. When the army acquired the land in the 1940s, the former landowners cut off all the merchantable timber, so these forests are no more than around 60-70 years old. Nature is resilient and it gives us hope for other restorations.
