Pine Sprouts
In the west, where I grew up, you just didn't see trees growing up from the ground. To get a tree, you had to call a local tree farm and have them plant an already grown tree in your yard. Colorado is not an hospitable place for anything to grow from the dirt, you see.
So here I am in North Carolina, were the pine trees grow fast and there is a lot of water. We've been having some great rains over the last couple of days, and when I went outside today, I found all the weeds growing through the pine straw next to my building, where they shouldn't be growing. But that is not all. I also found a number of pine tree sprouts.
This is a new experience for me, seeing a tree in its just-born infancy. I know that eventually, new pine straw will be placed down and will choke them out, but I couldn't help pull a couple of them out of the earth just to look at them and study. So soft, so fragile. It was the first time I've ever seen a tree so young. And it made me wonder what this little sprout may have turned into. I picked it because it eventually would have had its roots under my apartment, and I've been through that before, and it sucks. But still, its an amazing thing to see something so small that could turn into something so big (the pines here are 50+ feet).
I don't have any moral qualms about picking the trees, or the weeds; nonetheless, sometimes you wonder. What did this place look like before we (white folk) ever came here? Hard to imagine, due to too many generations of Manifest Destiny (from Polk; a UNC grad). But you can still wonder.
So here I am in North Carolina, were the pine trees grow fast and there is a lot of water. We've been having some great rains over the last couple of days, and when I went outside today, I found all the weeds growing through the pine straw next to my building, where they shouldn't be growing. But that is not all. I also found a number of pine tree sprouts.
This is a new experience for me, seeing a tree in its just-born infancy. I know that eventually, new pine straw will be placed down and will choke them out, but I couldn't help pull a couple of them out of the earth just to look at them and study. So soft, so fragile. It was the first time I've ever seen a tree so young. And it made me wonder what this little sprout may have turned into. I picked it because it eventually would have had its roots under my apartment, and I've been through that before, and it sucks. But still, its an amazing thing to see something so small that could turn into something so big (the pines here are 50+ feet).
I don't have any moral qualms about picking the trees, or the weeds; nonetheless, sometimes you wonder. What did this place look like before we (white folk) ever came here? Hard to imagine, due to too many generations of Manifest Destiny (from Polk; a UNC grad). But you can still wonder.
posted by cc at
7:00 PM
2 Comments:
One of the cool things about being a wildland firefighter is the chance to see the forest in various states of growth and health. I have seen the mosaic patterns of a “healthy” burn across the Alaskan Black Spruce stands, where the fire jumped and swirled about the stands. I have seen the desirable burns that clear the forest floor of clutter and ladder fuels, creating an open forest under a canopy. Yes, I have seen the seedlings of the mighty ponderosa or the tough lodgepoles, after the fire’s heat has opened their cones. Sometimes we are on fires so long that the seeds from the first day of the fire are already 4 inches high by the time we leave.
But…I have also seen the “moonscapes” from fires that have burn so hot, that the soil was sterilized. I have seen the ghastly overgrown undergrowth that plagues the nation’s forest all too often with the over zealot use of fire control. I have seen entire mountainsides of trees discolored by an infestation of the pine beetle. I have even seen the damage from a freak windstorm, which flattens an entire forest. Forests weaken as a whole due to the fact it was too dense. I have spent countless hours thinning trees infested by mistletoe, which spreads rampantly in dense forests.
I have also seen many territories that are not open to the public, countless spectacular sunrises and sets and mountain visas, so numerous I can not remember them all. I have seen untouched wilderness, and overly protected backyards alike. I can truly wonder what the forest looked like without the influence brought by the “moral equivalence of war” – the rally cry of the Forest Service in its infancy. It amazes me what people see as a healthy forest, which in many cases is really not the case. I have learned to respect and appreciate wildfire as a whole. Even in its 50-foot state, the pines are still “fragile”. What is even more amazing is seeing how that fragile seedling fits in the entire ecosystem. Truly a part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Yeah, I agree with you, bro, about the need for fires. It's kind of weird, out here in the east, where there is so much rain, that folks don't think about fires the way we do out west. But seeing these pine sprouts outside my apartment, just affected me in ways I can't describe.
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