In Log Raft News
Even if you have not heard the term “nurse log” you have likely seen them on your hikes in the forest. These are the fallen trees who surrender themselves to the forest. Some people can’t see the forest for the trees; well, these trees can’t see themselves for the forest. These are trees that have dissolved their egos, if trees ever do have egos. By this metaphor I mean to say that more than individuals in the forest, the trees are forest. This is especially evident when the tree no longer stands with the attributes of an Oak, a Maple, or a BIrch, but is halfway to soil, subsumed by the other trees who now relish her sponge of nutrients and moisture.
Forest is forest; it’s not just a bunch of individual trees. When trees fall they are still and ever a part of the forest. The fallen limbs, leaves, and trunks become both giant vitamins and drip irrigation systems. The wood lays on the floor spending perhaps another hundred years soaking up water and cooling the soil below as it decomposes and becomes home to fungi, moss, bacteria, lichen, plants, trees, invertebrates, ants, snails, birds, rodents and many more beings that we cannot see, and thus a decomposing trunk is likely to comprise about 40% living cells, whereas a standing tree is only likely to have only about 5%. This is because life in a standing tree resides mostly in the cambium, the outer growing layer just under the bark. Really makes one ask the question: what do we mean by “alive?” I can’t look at a tree on the ground and call her “dead.” It’s truer to call them hosts, nurse logs, or nursery logs. These are the spaces where life is most abundant. And this is why coarse woody debris is an integral part of the forest. Without it what we have is at best a park or a tree farm.
These fallen trees stabilize the forest and the landscape. On hillsides and mountainsides fallen trees prevent the sliding of soil; they capture and hold the organic matter rather than allowing it to wash down the slope. These trees have spent a lifetime sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in their wood; when they fall they offer this carbon to the saprotrophs who fix it into the soil. Aren’t trees endlessly amazing? We are finally beginning to watch trees closely enough to learn their valuable teachings about how to live on this planet. They have been here for around 370 million years compared to we who just got here 300,000 years ago. Is it any wonder that we struggle to imagine the experience and knowledge trees possess about relation to Earth? They are so generous, so humble, and yet the most exquisite technology the world will ever know.
Do you remember the “conservation of matter” grade school from elementary science class? Nothing enters or leaves the system of the Earth. That gave me a lot to consider when I first heard it. It gives me a lot to consider even now. When I think about old growth forests, the ones that have been allowed to just be forests, I see this concept at work. True forests just fold in on themselves, rise and fall in waves just like the ocean in infinitesimally slow motion. We barely know what this looks like or what happens here because we (modern human settler colonists anyway) saw only resources and began cutting. As soon as we pulled the first timbers from these forests the system was disturbed, the chain interrupted. When we removed everything and left barren earth whole ecosystems vanished. We undid millions of years in about one hundred. Now we are left with only these tiny rare pockets of true forest. Capitalism can leave nothing alone. Capitalism doesn’t look back or take responsibility. So, how can we see what it’s done to our planet and to ourselves? Can we let them be? We struggle to give forest even a hundred years to begin to sing again?
All this to say that one of the lessons of the Circle Forest is the conservation of matter. We are not taking anything out of the forest except the garbage that has accumulated over the past few decades. We are using the project to demonstrate the power of fallen trees and coarse woody debris to generate life. Any invasives that were cut, or trees that have fallen remain in the forest to give themselves back to the forest. Even if this Siberian Elm is deemed invasive and is not allowed to propagate here as a Siberian Elm, she is still a welcome part of the forest, hugged by fungi, moss, and lichen until she is subsumed by the Oaks and Pines who replace her.
What this means for the Circle Forest is that we are looking at ways to organize the woody debris in a way that keeps it out of footpaths and puts it into the consciousness of visitors. We want an aesthetic demonstration of nurse logs and their importance. We are very excited and inspired by this puzzle. We are building a log raft, a stump scape, and a forest critter path. The challenge has been fruitful and fun. This is just one of the ways that we are assisting this forest in being her best self.
