This is the forest primeval
February 16, 2022 8:51 AM Subscribe
Bob Leverett "comes across like something between an old Southern senator and an itinerant preacher, ready to filibuster or sermonize at a moment’s notice. Invariably, the topic of these sermons is the importance of old-growth forest, not only for its serene effect on the human soul or for its biodiversity, but for its vital role in mitigating climate change.“
"There’s a spiritual quality to being out here: You walk silently through these woods, and there’s a spirit that comes out. My first wife said, ‘You know, Bob, you’re supposed to bring people to the forest, you’re supposed to open the door for them. They’ll find out thereafter.’”
"There’s a spiritual quality to being out here: You walk silently through these woods, and there’s a spirit that comes out. My first wife said, ‘You know, Bob, you’re supposed to bring people to the forest, you’re supposed to open the door for them. They’ll find out thereafter.’”
I hang out in a lot of secondary growth forests (and cities, and parks and stuff), and there is an odd, visceral difference when you get deep into an old growth area, further away from where modern humans have fucked things up. I am the least woo-woo of them out there, but there is a distinct vibe, for lack of a better word, to these places.
It's brought me to tears several times. It's worth seeking out, and leaving no trace you were there.
posted by furnace.heart at 10:48 AM on February 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's brought me to tears several times. It's worth seeking out, and leaving no trace you were there.
posted by furnace.heart at 10:48 AM on February 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
“There’s a spiritual quality to being out here: You walk silently through these woods, and there’s a spirit that comes out.
I am not a spiritual person by any means, but a couple years ago my wife and I did a canoe trip on a very remote lake in Maine. Now, the entire state of Maine has been logged a few times over and is still logged to this day, but we paddled out to a big island on the lake (the island was literally called The Big Island) and walked through the old growth trees. I have been very, very deep into some New England wildernesses (my MeFi name is named after one such location) and while it's very wild out that way, none of the trees are very old or very big. I had never knowingly been among old growth trees in New England but walking among them I certainly felt something not entirely unlike a spirit. It was just... different. The size, the bark, the undergrowth. Everything about them felt like we had taken a time machine back a couple hundred years, which I suppose isn't too far off from what we did.
Amy (my wife) is very into forest forensics, and has read at least a couple books by Tom Wessels, the guy in the videos that which_chick linked to above. Where most of us just see "a bunch of trees" she can tell you something about their history just by looking at them. New England forests are wonderful places, in part because of what they used to be. Cellar holes and stone walls everywhere.
This is a great post. Thanks, drlith!
posted by bondcliff at 11:03 AM on February 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
I am not a spiritual person by any means, but a couple years ago my wife and I did a canoe trip on a very remote lake in Maine. Now, the entire state of Maine has been logged a few times over and is still logged to this day, but we paddled out to a big island on the lake (the island was literally called The Big Island) and walked through the old growth trees. I have been very, very deep into some New England wildernesses (my MeFi name is named after one such location) and while it's very wild out that way, none of the trees are very old or very big. I had never knowingly been among old growth trees in New England but walking among them I certainly felt something not entirely unlike a spirit. It was just... different. The size, the bark, the undergrowth. Everything about them felt like we had taken a time machine back a couple hundred years, which I suppose isn't too far off from what we did.
Amy (my wife) is very into forest forensics, and has read at least a couple books by Tom Wessels, the guy in the videos that which_chick linked to above. Where most of us just see "a bunch of trees" she can tell you something about their history just by looking at them. New England forests are wonderful places, in part because of what they used to be. Cellar holes and stone walls everywhere.
This is a great post. Thanks, drlith!
posted by bondcliff at 11:03 AM on February 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
Some old growth forest is tiny: both area and height. Wistman's Wood in the middle of Dartmoor [SatMap] in SW England is a tiny fragment [4 ha = 8 ac] high altitude [for English oaks] forest which has been too remote & scrubby to fell and somehow has resisted the depredations of sheep and deer since who-knows-when? the neolithic? There's 120 species of lichen by day and dryads by night. Mystic, wonderful, perfick!
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:50 PM on February 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:50 PM on February 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
This was delightful, thank you for sharing!
I'm on the other coast, but the Olympic Peninsula is one of my favorite places on earth. Giant old growth trees, wider than a car, roots and limbs twisting and and clambering over each other, covered in a thick, drooping pelt of moss. A thousand shades of green. It's as though you fell through a portal into a magical fantasy world, that at any given moment you might see a unicorn standing among the ferns, peeking out at you. It's incredibly humbling. These ancient giants have stood silently by since before Europeans set foot in the country. There's a spiritual presence, an ambient energy, that younger forests have not had time to develop.
As a forest ages, the thick canopy cuts off light that new saplings need to survive, so the resulting forest is more open, leaving plenty of space for other species. Thick gnarled roots push deep underground, stabilizing riverbanks and hillsides. Animals hide in the spaces under and between the roots, remnants from growing on fallen trees/nurse logs. It's not surprising to me that these older forests are more efficient at carbon capture than the crowded, stunted tree farms 'managed' by logging companies, more resilient to pests, disease and drought, less prone to landslides. Leaving them intact also gives other species a chance to flourish, niches can stabilize, diversity blossoms. The forest is a community, not just a collection of trees - if we leveled entire cities every 20 years I'm sure we'd find it equally disruptive. It's the difference between a wheat field and a prairie.
I weep every time I leave the few old growth regions that are still protected and have to drive through the apocalyptic clearcut landscape that surrounds them. It feels like turning that unicorn into sausage.
posted by Feyala at 3:31 PM on February 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm on the other coast, but the Olympic Peninsula is one of my favorite places on earth. Giant old growth trees, wider than a car, roots and limbs twisting and and clambering over each other, covered in a thick, drooping pelt of moss. A thousand shades of green. It's as though you fell through a portal into a magical fantasy world, that at any given moment you might see a unicorn standing among the ferns, peeking out at you. It's incredibly humbling. These ancient giants have stood silently by since before Europeans set foot in the country. There's a spiritual presence, an ambient energy, that younger forests have not had time to develop.
As a forest ages, the thick canopy cuts off light that new saplings need to survive, so the resulting forest is more open, leaving plenty of space for other species. Thick gnarled roots push deep underground, stabilizing riverbanks and hillsides. Animals hide in the spaces under and between the roots, remnants from growing on fallen trees/nurse logs. It's not surprising to me that these older forests are more efficient at carbon capture than the crowded, stunted tree farms 'managed' by logging companies, more resilient to pests, disease and drought, less prone to landslides. Leaving them intact also gives other species a chance to flourish, niches can stabilize, diversity blossoms. The forest is a community, not just a collection of trees - if we leveled entire cities every 20 years I'm sure we'd find it equally disruptive. It's the difference between a wheat field and a prairie.
I weep every time I leave the few old growth regions that are still protected and have to drive through the apocalyptic clearcut landscape that surrounds them. It feels like turning that unicorn into sausage.
posted by Feyala at 3:31 PM on February 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is lovely! I am eager to have more sharing on this thread. @bondcliff I assumed from your handle that you like the White Mountains. I do and I like the Wessels books too. I think anyone who has spent time an in AMC hut or lodge has thumbed through those. I bought mine from Smith’s Mountain Wanderer bookstore, where I got bark id and lichen id books too. I like the idea that I might be able to tell fire damage from lightning etc.
During the first months of tempus covid my daughter and I would bushwack a lot, trying to find abandoned trails and while our neck of the WMNF has been clear cut in the 80s (and was threatened again) you can get the occasional old tree and it really does feel different. We found one that had a big wedge cut into it but wasn’t felled. Sometimes it is impossible to tell why a cluster was spared but it feels special.
On preview @Feyala’s comment makes me think about the quality of the silence when the canopy is so far above.
I hope we can get better land management policies on govt and private land ( big tracts yes, but a large of the effective carbon pulling urban canopy is in backyards.) I hope my kids and yours can have old stands and avoid wildfires. If we can’t ski as much dammit I don’t want to lose hiking too.
posted by drowsy at 5:34 PM on February 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
During the first months of tempus covid my daughter and I would bushwack a lot, trying to find abandoned trails and while our neck of the WMNF has been clear cut in the 80s (and was threatened again) you can get the occasional old tree and it really does feel different. We found one that had a big wedge cut into it but wasn’t felled. Sometimes it is impossible to tell why a cluster was spared but it feels special.
On preview @Feyala’s comment makes me think about the quality of the silence when the canopy is so far above.
I hope we can get better land management policies on govt and private land ( big tracts yes, but a large of the effective carbon pulling urban canopy is in backyards.) I hope my kids and yours can have old stands and avoid wildfires. If we can’t ski as much dammit I don’t want to lose hiking too.
posted by drowsy at 5:34 PM on February 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thank you for this. I'm guessing most people here might already know about Suzanne Simard's work on Forest Ecology, but if not, here's a good place to start.
posted by domdib at 3:40 AM on February 17, 2022
posted by domdib at 3:40 AM on February 17, 2022
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part 1, part 2, and part 3.
posted by which_chick at 9:20 AM on February 16, 2022 [4 favorites]