Continuing from yesterday’s blog about Finding the Mother Tree, I was reminded of this photo I took a few days ago when we were riding the mtb trails at Drumlanrig Castle (as an aside there’s a cheeky little old-skool 8-ball black run there that’s a lot of fun when added to the red route with challenging off-camber rooty descents and super-skinny trail, but it’s also totally knackering for exactly those same reasons and I needed a couple of days off to recover).
As we cycled through the logged area, I was aware of the many older beech trees still standing between the stacks of logs, and in other places, small hills of soil with a seedling pine sprouting out the pinnacle. I suppose I still felt sad at our industrialisation of life, but this scene is so much more beautiful than the clear-cuts I’ve been witnessing across north Wales and other parts of these Scottish borderlands.
I was reminded of Simard’s book because I realised the deep importance of the new lens she has painstakingly crafted so that we can view the forests and our interactions with them anew. I felt like I was watching her work unfold in real-time from across the ocean and held a deep appreciation for whoever does the logging here at Drumlanrig for their forward-thinking approach. Imagine if all logging sites looked like this – what a joy that would be.
Finally – I suppose I continue to feel frustrated that the truth about trees many of us hold in our hearts isn’t considered proper or correct until science has decreed it so, even if that means years of ridiculous and unnecessary practices while we wait for the established scientific thinking to catch up.
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