Stafford fire from Anderson
Another fire broke out in the north state. This one is the Stafford Fire and is threatening the town of Hayfork. These fires with all the destruction and chaos they bring with them often finish the day with one last bit of drama.
Stafford Fire Sunset
San Francisco
I was in the concrete jungle of San Francisco today. It was a cool gray day with lots and lots of folks. I looked at the dense pack living conditions of the big city and I missed all the space I have in my normal life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I understand a lot of people love living in the city. Different strokes for different folks and all of that. However, a trip to SF makes me appreciate my daily contact with nature. At my home and at my work. It is a blessing to be sure. It seems to me that the people in the big cities must feel disconnected from nature in a way that makes a person want to protect, treasure and guard it. I think that experiencing it in this way doesn’t leave many people with a true understanding of nature. At a very basic level I wish that everyone had to go out hunt, kill, clean, cook and eat an animal. Honestly I believe people would have a greater appreciation of their daily sustenance.
Mandrill at the San Francisco Zoo.
In my firefighter days, many years ago, I worked with a fellow from SF. He had never left the city before to spend any meaningful time in a rural environment. He was a very capable guy and after we left our fire training camp I was stationed in Redding and he in Ogo. Ogo was a fire station West of Redding and was well known for it’s great population of rattlesnakes. A few days later, both our crews responded to the same fire. He seemed a little tired, but otherwise in good spirits. About two weeks later the Redding crew was on a fire with the Ogo crew again, but I didn’t see my friend. I ask about him. His other crew members told me he hadn’t been sleeping well because it was too quiet at night, but when the coyotes would howl in the middle of the night he would fly out of bed in a panic. After about ten days he couldn’t take it anymore. He packed up and went home. I never saw him again and the old Ogo Fire Station is long gone. He never took the time to get comfortable in that setting. It was sad, but maybe I would have trouble making the same adjustment to living in the city.
I saw this log truck rolling through the Bay Area. Just a little reminder of where wood comes from.
I wish folks from the cities in California trusted our land managers more. The people I work with love nature as much as anyone and take great pride in the job they do. Instead, in a time when the science and technology have reached a point that we can accomplish amazing things in the woods, politically we are forced to do a more and more mediocre job by trying to create conditions where no one can make a mistake.
Unfortunately, the desire protect the natural environment by stopping land management is resulting in loving our forest to death. Death by uncontrollable fires and bark beetle epidemics. People need to view land management as a tool to improve our forests where people are part of this ecosystem and not as an obstacle to a healthy forest.
The Ponderosa Fire from across the valley.
Fire is upon the North State once again. It has been a few years since we have had fire like this. Thousands of our neighbors have had to evacuate their homes. The air is thick with smoke. The firefighters, air attack, and equipment operators battle the fires to protect life and property. Please keep the folks in the paths of these fire in you thoughts and prayers.
From Firestorm In The Forest, a Redtail Publishing Book.
I opened my front door this morning to let the dog out, and the air is clouded with smoke and the smell or fire is strong. The Ponderosa Fire is burning about 15 miles from where I am sitting. As this drama unfolds the picture of the forest that I worked on for years is rapidly changing. Thinned timberstands, young tree plantations and acres of mature forests that I help manage. For people the fire is a tragedy, but to nature it isn’t good or bad only different. Nature is violently changing the picture of this forest that I remember. It will re-calibrate and fill the void created by the fire and a new picture is created. In the meantime the foresters and loggers work side by side with firefighters to stop this fire.
The forester and the artist both create landscapes. Only a forester’s canvas is far larger than an artist’s canvas. The artist uses pencils, pens, brushes and all the other tools that create the play of color and light on paper. The forester’s tools are far larger, louder and powerful. They are the skidders, feller-bunchers, chainsaws, yarders and seedlings. Okay, I know what you are thinking, what kind of baloney is this guy selling. When we look out at a forest we see a beautiful thing. Harvesting trees changes how that forest looks and develops. The conventional wisdom may be that harvesting trees makes a forest ugly and at stages along the way I would agree. That is all part of the process. When an area is burned in a wildfire and the salvage harvest is complete it looks pretty bad to most folks. This is only one stage in the development of an ever-changing picture. Soon the seedlings come and it is no longer a barren clearcut, but it is a brand new forest.
A new forest rising from ashes of a wildfire.
Each year the trees grow and the picture is adorned with deer, turkeys and other wildlife that forage in this new forest. As a forester I relish the changes I see with each passing year and how our work adds to the picture. For a forester the picture is never done so we have to appreciate it for what it is at this moment in time. Most folks have memories of that favorite camping spot in the forest that they went to as a child. Memories that are so striking and indelible that they cannot imagine them ever changing. However, these forest change every day. Mostly slowly, but sometimes in blazing moments. To the forest the changes are not good or bad, but simply different. To the forester it is a canvas on which to apply his or her trade. The forest changes and grows and our pictures change with it. We may not always agree on what makes beautiful art or a beautiful forest, but I hope as practitioners of the trade we are passionate and dedicated to the process.
I did this watercolor for the children’s book Firestorm In The Forest , a Red Tail Publishing book.
As an artist working in the forest provides an endless source of subjects to paint or draw. Never stale and always changing. I never know when I will come across a bear crashing through the brush or a dramatic vista that will make me pause for a minute to take it in.
THE FORESTER ARTIST 