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Mossy cathedral
-Western redcedar (Thuja plicata)
Douglas fir (Pseudosuga menziesii)
-Sword fern (Polystichum munitum)
Also bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum)
Need y’all to know that in the 1970’s a letter to the editor was published in Daily Telegraph where the author offhandedly used the phrase “Tolkien-like gloom” to describe an area with barren trees and JRRT himself wrote back an incensed rebuttal at the use of his name in a context that suggested anything negative about trees.
“I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying ‘gloom’, especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies”
He was like how dare you sir I am the biggest tree fan out there
A tree tried to eat the hobbits. Tom Bombadil had to save them. There's Mirkwood, "The Forest of Great Fear." I'm on the side of the writer of the letter to the editor.
Because Tolkien is Tolkien, he actually directly defended the actions of all his forests and trees in this same letter I’m referencing
This is the best thing in the entire world. Here is a transcript:
Beautiful place because trees are loved From Prof. J.R.R. TOLKIEN SIR—with reference to your leader of June 29, I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying “gloom,” especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two-legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things, but it was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story. It would be unfair to compare the Forestry Commission with Sauron because, as you observe, it is capable of repentance; but nothing it has done that is stupid compares with the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetrated by private individuals and minor official bodies. This savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing. J.R.R. TOLKIEN Merton College, Oxford
"Old Man Willow did nothing wrong" is not the Tolkien take I expected today, but I'm here for it.
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Trees
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Source: pamietniko
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west coast on expired Kodak gold//Canon AE-1
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Morning Along the Road to Hurricane Ridge
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The Snag - Camp Fife, Washington State - May 2022
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A lonely road in WA
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It was gut-wrenching when I realized that many people alive today have never seen a truly mature tree up close.
In the Eastern USA, only tiny remnants of old-growth forest remain; all the rest, over 99%, was clear-cut within the last 100-150 years.
Most tree species here have a lifespan of 300-500 years—likely longer, since extant examples of truly old trees are so rare, there is limited ability to study them. In a suburban environment, almost all of the trees you see around you are mere saplings. A 50 year old oak tree is a youth only beginning its life.
The forest where I work is 100 years old; it was clear cut around 1920. It is still so young.
When I dig into the ground there, there is a layer about an inch thick of rich, plush, moist, fragrant topsoil, packed with mycelium and light and soft as a foam mattress. Underneath that the ground becomes hard and chalky in color, with a mineral odor.
It takes 100 years to build an inch of topsoil.
That topsoil, that marvelous, rich, living substance, took 100 years to build.
I am sorry your textbooks lied to you. Do you remember pictures in diagrams of soil layers, with a six-inch topsoil layer and a few feet of subsoil above bedrock?
That's not true anymore. If you are not an "outdoorsy" person that hikes off trail in forests regularly, it is likely that you have never touched true topsoil. The soil underlying lawns is depleted, compacted garbage with hardly any life in it. It seems more similar to rocks than soil to me now.
You see, tilling the soil and repeatedly disturbing it for agriculture destroys the topsoil layer, and there is no healthy plant community to regenerate it.
The North American prairies used to hold layers of topsoil more than eight or nine feet deep. That was a huge carbon sink, taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it underground.
Then European colonists settled the prairie and tried to drive the bison to extinction as part of the plan to drive Native Americans to extinction, and plowed up that topsoil...and the results were devastating. You might recall being taught about the Dust Bowl. Disrupting that incredible topsoil layer held in place by 12-foot-tall prairie grasses and over 100 different wildflower species caused the nation to be engulfed in horrific dirt storms that turned the sky black and had people hundreds of miles away coughing up clods of mud and sweeping thick drifts of dirt out of their homes.
But plowing is fundamental to agricultural civilizations at their very origins! you might say.
Where did those early civilizations live? River valleys.
Why river valleys? They're fertile because of seasonal flooding that deposits rich silt that can then be planted in.
And where does that silt come from?
Well, a huge river is created by smaller rivers coming together, which is created by smaller creeks coming together, which have their origins in the mountains and uplands, which are no good for farming but often covered in rich, dense forests.
The forests create the rich soil that makes agriculture possible. An ancient forest is so powerful, it brings life to civilizations and communities hundreds of miles away.
You may have heard that cattle farming is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. A huge chunk of that is just the conversion of an existing forest or grassland to pasture land. Robust plant communities like forests, wetlands, and grasslands are carbon sinks, storing carbon and removing it from the atmosphere. The destruction of these environments is a direct source of carbon emissions.
All is not lost. Nature knows how to regenerate herself after devastating events; she's done so countless times before, and forests are not static places anyway. They are in a constant state of regrowth and change. Human caretakers have been able to manage ancient forests for thousands of years. It is colonialism and the ideology of profit and greed that is so destructive, not human presence.
Preserve the old growth forests of the present, yes, but it is even more vital to protect the old growth forests of the future.
@headspace-hotel thank you for your many posts about conservation. It’s because of following you that I’ve started to look at gardening, land management and resource preservation differently. When someone says “buy this and we’ll plant a tree!” I say “what kind of tree? Where are you planting it? Is it being supported after planting or are you just leaving it there?”
^usually the "we plant trees when you Buy Product" is just, like, a description of how the paper industry works.
Wood pulp used for paper is grown in huge monoculture tree farms that are harvested to be turned into pulp with the trees are like, 15-20 years old.
A company that claims to plant a new tree for every tree cut down isn't doing shit.
Someday, there will be old growth again. Old Growth, with creaking bones and wizened bark. Old, in the way so many of our myths begin long ago. I’m sure of it. We can have that world again.
We will never live to see it. Nor will our children. But this planet, these forests, are seeds worth planting.
This is what I mean when I say conservation. To preserve, and to heal, what we have damaged. It is difficult. But we must. So that one day trees thicker than you are tall can tower over native plant life, gracefully watching over wetland, meadow, plain—anything and everything—
And be Old again.
AND THERE WAS A CRACK IN THE WALLS OF MY PRISON 👏 AND 👏THROUGH 👏 IT 👏 I 👏 SAW 👏 A 👏 TREE 👏
So. I volunteer a lot with the Friends of Willapa NWR in southwest Washington. The entire Refuge is full of amazing habitats, but possibly the crown jewel is the old growth western red cedar grove on Long Island. It's less than 300 acres, but it's a hint at what the entire area used to be covered in before we clearcut everything.
Last time I was over there was this past September; Refuge staff took a few dozen people over on a barge and I was one of the nature guides. On the way back I was chatting with one of the longtime Refuge staff. We were looking at the Willapa Hills along highway 101, and he pointed at one long section "Yeah, I remember when that got logged in the 1980s. Before then, that whole area looked like Long Island."
That hit me like a ton of bricks. Like, I missed seeing thousands of acres--instead of a scant several dozen--of this majesty by just a few decades. Those forests were still standing when I was born. This isn't just stuff that happened in the 1800s. It's still happening now. Environmental groups in the PNW are fighting to save the last scraps of what used to be. We need to save what's left, not just to preserve what we still have, but so we know better how to help foster the return of what once was and could be again. They're the last remaining records of what we lost.
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