@deborah-carey I'm in the East Bay, so that's why I said I wasn't overly worried. As you said, the forest management programs here are top-notch, especially in the old-growth forests. Those old guys (and gals?) were here long before us, and will be here long after we're gone. ?
I thought I would post a quick update on the big basin fire. It was a pretty good night for the fire fighters here in the bay area. There is no fire in the park now, but the surrounding ares is not yet cleared. The trees for the most part appear to be OK,but the infrastructure will have to be rebuilt. Check out the link for more pictures... were there are green leaves.. there is life.
Mercury News reported on Friday that while “the vast majority” of the park’s redwoods are still standing, several have fallen, including one ancient redwood that had a base “more than a dozen feet across.” The News also reported that nearly every one of the park’s redwoods had been “scorched.”
“We are devastated to report that Big Basin, as we have known it, loved it and cherished it for generations, is gone,” the Sempervirens Fund, a nonprofit whose mission is to protect and preserve redwoods, said in a statement. “Early reports are that the wildfire has consumed much of the park’s historic facilities. We do not yet know the fate of the park’s grandest old trees.”
https://time.com/5882581/redwoods-big-basin-california-fires/
BOULDER CREEK, Calif. — When a massive wildfire swept through California’s oldest state park last week it was feared many trees in a grove of old-growth redwoods, some of them 2,000 years old and among the tallest living things on Earth, may finally have succumbed.
But an Associated Press reporter and photographer hiked the renowned Redwood Trail at Big Basin Redwoods State Park on Monday and confirmed most of the ancient redwoods had withstood the blaze. Among the survivors is one dubbed Mother of the Forest.
“That is such good news, I can’t tell you how much that gives me peace of mind,” said Laura McLendon, conservation director for the Sempervirens Fund, an environmental group dedicated to the protection of redwoods and their habitats.
@deborah-carey This? Makes my heart sing! Thank you for sharing.
But an Associated Press reporter and photographer hiked the renowned Redwood Trail at Big Basin Redwoods State Park on Monday and confirmed most of the ancient redwoods had withstood the blaze.
As I expected. ;-) It will take more than a fire to take down the ancients.
The New York Times Magazine has an article up called "The Social Life of Forests", on the work of Suzanne Simard, professor of Forest Ecology. @jeanne-mayell , i think you would be interested in this. It talks about how trees communicate and share resources, and things like how dying trees can "will" their carbon to other trees, even different species. How the forest is one lifeform, and not just a collection of individuals. It hits on the idea that Darwinism, and it's "survival of the fittest", is as untrue as it is ugly.
“There are no individuals. There aren’t even separate species. Everything in the forest is the forest.”
And here is a TED Talk by Dr. Simard- "Nature's Internet: how trees talk to each other in a healthy forest: https://youtu.be/breDQqrkikM
@unk-p. Love that you brought up Simaud's work. I think of the trees as our caretakers too. Ever since she called the bigger trees "Grandmother Trees," it changed the way I think of the world.
We can also be grandmother trees for each other.
I love how you describe the significance of her work, the falseness of Darwin's survival of the fittest.
I love listening to trees. When I was a little girl, our backyard was filled with apple trees (sixteen in all) that backed up to a great pine forest. My friend and I would gallop like colts through that forest. We pretended we were horses living among Indian tribes. I don't know where we got this notion, but we were half wild and so happy.
No matter what chaos was happening at home, I was healed in the forest. Yesterday I read these lines from Shelley:
...in solitude or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring in the blue air there is then found a secret correspondence with our hearts. — Percy B. Shelly
Wow, Jeanne, that is really beautiful. You know, my yard is completely forested. There are multiple layers of canopies- some of the trees were ones i planted 30 years ago, when this was a rental house that i was helping someone fix up (i had no idea that i would ever live in it, or even in this state). But it is a small lot, inside the loop. I have often had to remove small saplings, just because there are so many, or too many of one variety, as i don't want a monoculture. But whenever i do this, it feels like the older trees are not relieved to have more resources available to them (water being a big one). Instead, it feels like my whole forest is just aghast that i could do such a thing. After reading Simard, i can see why. Wondering if i should write her and ask her about that?
...........I love listening to trees. When I was a little girl, our back yard was filled with apple trees (sixteen in all) that backed up to a great pine forest. My friend and I would gallop like colts through that forest. We pretended we were horses living among Indian tribes. I don't know where we got this notion, but we were half wild and happy.
No matter what chaos was happening at home, I was healed in the forest. Yesterday I read these lines from Shelley:
...in solitude or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring in the blue air there is then found a secret correspondence with our hearts. — Percy B. Shelly
Thank you Jeanne & Unk!!!
Love love this ?????
You made my whole day (night)!
Jeanne, I did the same thing as a wildchild living near a national forest in CA ???
The great mycologist Paul Stamets has written a series of books on mushrooms, their beneficial presence and interconnectedness with the forests and decribes the fragile intricate ecological.system.... maybe a Druid in a former life.
" We must tread softly on the web of life, or else it will unravel beneath us ...Living in harmony with our natural environment is key to our health as individuals and as a species "
~Paul Stamets (Mycelium Running)
Wow, Jeanne, that is really beautiful. You know, my yard is completely forested. There are multiple layers of canopies- some of the trees were ones i planted 30 years ago, when this was a rental house that i was helping someone fix up (i had no idea that i would ever live in it, or even in this state). But it is a small lot, inside the loop. I have often had to remove small saplings, just because there are so many, or too many of one variety, as i don't want a monoculture. But whenever i do this, it feels like the older trees are not relieved to have more resources available to them (water being a big one). Instead, it feels like my whole forest is just aghast that i could do such a thing. After reading Simard, i can see why. Wondering if i should write her and ask her about that?
That's interesting. I had a mirror-image experience a few years ago when we had to take down seven enormous, dying laurel oaks on our semi-feral city lot. This species grows huge but only lives 70 to 100 years and these were at the end of their lifespan, rotting inside and dropping branches during every storm. Two different arborists said they were likely smash someones roof in, if not kill somebody.
I grew up in a forest and have a really hard time seeing trees cut down, but these had to go. I went to work the day it was done so as not to have to witness it. (My husband stayed to watch the crews.) When I returned I was quite surprised to experience a feeling of freedom, ease, and breath. I don't know if that was my subconscious being relieved I wouldn't be smashed by a falling tree, or whether it was the younger, smaller trees being happy to be out of of the shade and competition. Probably a bit of both.