Four months ago, our life of peace in the forest was broken when a disturbing force permeated the otherwise serene verdant landscape. What ensued was an immeasurably misplaced sense of human do-goodery which became a rather unsettling force in our daily lives and spirits here in the forest.

For six days a week starting around six in morning, a seemingly every minute of nearly ten hours every day was filled with the maddening noise and smells of gasoline powered chainsaws. Sounds of falling limbs and trees both big and small ripped through the once peaceful forest like a tenacious storm. The destruction lasted for nearly four months straight as if a blistering windstorm was unleashed by some unearthly ruling force. Hundreds, then thousands of the verdant kin which made up the world of varying living canopies we so deeply cherished, stood helplessly in its path. It happened at an alarmingly slow and tortuous pace.

As swaths of the surrounding forest bared the unceasing force my breath fell shallow, and my spirit weary and tattered. With every patch of decimated forest that followed, I felt more and more like running away.

Several months earlier we had seen the flagging which we traced with a certain knowing of what might be. My chest and stomach retracted and soured. Though I hoped it wasn’t so, I had suspected that this was going to take place. It was something I knew could happen, which I kept in the recesses of my mind when we moved here for the thought of it was too painful.

In late September we met face-to-face with reality when the first section of forest was stripped at a painful pace entirely of its natural understory. Sheer disfigurement was taking place. Where there was once a nearly impenetrable forest stood was now a tattered window of exposed limbs and trunks, opened and bare.

We learned then from a member of our small community that an operation like this had taken place around 14 years ago. Given the timeline and some other historical information about the area, this seemed to be a fairly regular occurrence. Just like it is in many western forests.

They, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), were performing a “fuels reduction” thinning project of approximately 450 acres of forest. Of those 450 acres, three sides neighbor our forest home boundaries. We wanted to know more as to the whys and hows of the operation, knowing very well from historical and ongoing accounts of thinnings throughout Western US, just how damaging these prescriptions actually end up being to our forests’ ecology, including making our forests’ more open, drier, and susceptible to greater wind force. All the while of course, many of the Federal land management agency-led operations such as this are often guised as ultimately beneficial, which I believe the general public is fooled in believing.

Beneficial exactly for whom or for what? It is a heavy-handed question, with an equally heavy-handed honest truth. It’s a question worth asking. Both from the human’s perspective of well being and ecological well being.

In the beginning, we were told by a local State ecologist that what was actually taking place was a “ponderosa pine recovery protocol”. Hmm? I questioned the validity of that statement the moment I heard it. It sounded much too much like the flowery statements federal and state employees often give to everyday people asking questions. Except, I am not that everyday person they so often are prepared to speak to. I am a restoration ecologist. A born naturalist who has spent years observing the patterns of healthy and recovering ecosystems; and who also has worked for a federal land management agency who plainly engages in misplaced “management” operations such as this. Operations whereby where there is government money to be spent, fills pointless and outright harmful tasks in meaningless job placements.

As the disheartening sweep of jagged blades moved westward, we began finding multiple once towering ponderosas lying cold and segmented upon the earth. Tears of new sap slowly seep from their age-revealing rings. I shake my gaze and move my eyes to the newly exposed sky upwards of missing canopy. And like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, my being shudders as I try desperately try to make sense of this new course of action.

Stifled tears and feelings of compassionate anger bloom alongside my literally shaken core. To even almost cry a tear became unusually, physically painful, as I continued to bare witness to the destruction surrounding me. I stood there tearless, shallow in breath, and without words.

We didn’t need to hike very far before losing count of the felled pines. There, right were I stood, where once, many dozens of towering giants stood was now an obvious clearing.

When we raised our concerns about this at first the State ecologist admitted that the first hundred or so felled ponderosas was “a mistake” and “shouldn’t have happened” (his actual words). A mistake, was a gross understatement. There was nothing that could be done to get those mature trees back! In a relative blink of an eye, they were gone.

Despite this, the operation carried on heavy-handedly, with even more ponderosas being dropped than ever expected. All the flowery statements we were told from managing employees fell short. First, they said it was a “ponderosa recovery protocol”, then admitted that live ponderosas, unless diseased, were not supposed to be targeted, only the understory as this project was a “fuels reduction prescription”. Then, they carried on even more aggressively than before taking down many more ponderosas than we could have ever imagined. Ponderosas of various sizes, from 2 foot baby trees to very large mature trees and every size in between!

While I do realize forest thinning operations are a common practice in the West, living amidst one is a surreal experience. Never in my life have I felt the traumatization of this sort of thing happening so close to home. My heart could hardly handle it as I literally could feel my body pump out stress chemicals which made my core ache and my head turn hazy. (Later did I find out that they had indeed thinned more aggressively than what usually occurs. This was strikingly apparent to us, and to others who visited the area post-thinning. It didn’t seem to make much sense. Why would a “ponderosa recovery” effort involve felling so many ponderosas?). There are even multiple zones where it seems oddly, seemingly only ponderosas were targeted, leaving behind sparse stands of alligator juniper and emory oak. The drastic changes of the suddenly absent understory seems counterintuitive to combat effects of changing climates. Walking in throughout the area, we could actually feel the changes in the heat index immediately after the thinning in this way.

Throughout the duration of the thinning, I felt like a trapped wild animal trying to escape the madness surrounding me, looking desperately for a place to hide, at the same time feeling overly exposed in certain terror. In feeling this, I felt deeply for the wildlife who shared this natural space and felt a visceral sense that I was living in a broken world.

Later my mind turned to the many indigenous tribes in the Amazon. While this occurrence was a distressing one, I couldn’t even begin to imagine the terror those tribes must experience when their ancestral forest homes are targeted and defaced for mining and agricultural interests.

I found little rest during these months. Not even hiking, walking, or being outside alleviated the heaviness of what was happening. For everywhere I could normally walk, I’d bare direct witness to the destruction and/or could hear/smell the ongoing destruction beyond. It was, to say the very least, a unusually painful experience. Eventually I had to leave for a couple of weeks to attempt to rest my ears, eyes, mind and heart.

While it does still hurt, I’ve come through the other side of this experience a bit traumatized, but well enough. With honesty, this experience is something I wish those who do not live near forests could experience. Not for the terror of it, but for the visceral sense of what it means to lose our natural home.

Beyond that, I’d like to write a little about the supposed benefits of forest thinnings, as well as my thoughts about why perhaps they worsen ecological balance.

Ultimately, suppression of natural processes (such as fires) by humans lead to dire consequences for generations that follow. These actions taken to “manage” nature and our forests to prevent natural forest fires is a prime example. By State and Federal standards, the actions of thinning are far too often not for the benefit of the forests themselves, but to meet the demands of sprawled humans and human settlements.

In attempts to quell human fears of natural processes, the modern rationale is to prevent fires altogether. A rationale actually goes something like this “We are scared of forest fires, therefore lets get rid of forests”. It’s a way of thought that doesn’t sit well with me. So many of our so-called forests aren’t the robust forests they once were.

In my heart and in my mind, the answer to the question of what a forest really is comes tunneling in as a crude awakening detailed in the reality of our humanly existence which is presented in my book.

Naturally, and for as long as forests have come in to being on this amazing planet of ours, they co-evolved alongside wildfires. In fact, many of our forests have evolved to endure 5-10 year cycles of low-intensity wildfires which encourage the growth of new generations of trees. Low-intensity once-a-decade fires are actually known to assist tree specimens in living for half a millennium or more!¹

The unfortunate truth is that human efforts to mechanically thin forests to suppress naturally occurring, low-intensity forest fires has actually contributed to higher incidence of rampant high-intensity wildfires in more modern times. In response to our “pyrophobia” humans have actually made things worse. There are many reasons why this is. For one thing, opening up the forest understory allows for more wind tunneling and exposure from the sun which further dries out understory debris, which makes perfect kindling. Whereas otherwise healthy, living forest understory acts as a buffer. Living understory not only dampens wind gusts, but also because it is made up of multiple living plants, acts as sort of a moisten sponge. This allows naturally occurring fires to spread across the forest ground slowly and at a lower intensity. Oftentimes, (such as in the case of the thinning which occurred around the forest I live in) cut and fallen debris from thinning operations are simply left scattered about or in piles. Massive amounts of cut and dried fluffy understory is a far greater fire-risk than uncut, living understory. We are making the forests we have left, drier. Period. As I have written in my book, the only places where thinning is optimal is directly surrounding homes. Fire-wising in this way would not only save homeowners but national budgets as well.

Not only does thinning itself lead to drier forests and longer fire seasons with more intense fires, something climate change is already fueling, our manufactured homes made up of flammable, toxic-filled materials create an even more disastrous picture than otherwise natural forest fires. Think, manufactured plastic decking and other toxic materials modern houses are often made up of. In contrast, our ancestors lived in homes made up of natural wood, stone and mud. But that’s a whole other story of stories regarding our radical misalignment with Nature, so I’ll digress….

The truth of the matter is, we’ve gotten in Nature’s way of managing herself. Nature as I’ve stated many times before is a self-governing entity. There are many ways humans are needed to oversee and protect Nature yet, there is a fine line that is far too often crossed when we try to over-manage some of the natural processes that have occurred with out us for millennia.

“If you live in the river you should make friends with the crocodile.” ~ an Indian proverb

The quote above is a go-to of mine. If one wishes to live in the forest, one must understand the true nature of the forest. While it may be a painstakingly difficult concept for the masses of modern humanity to adopt, living alongside nature, not continually manipulating her may be most sustainable for all of us…for endless reasons. I recognize my views of letting nature be nature, may be too purist by modern standards but I know, beyond a doubt, it is the way we were meant to live in order for both ourselves, and the ecosystems we live in, to thrive the way we all truly know we could.