timber | THE FORESTER ARTIST

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.