May the Forest Be With You

As the horrific “fire season” begins again, I want to throw my vote in with Arthur Firstenberg (My View, Sunday April 8^{theSanta Fe New Mexican}  http://www.santafenewmexican.com/LocalColumnsViewpoints/My-View--Arthur-Firstenberg-Controlled-burns-a-prescription-for) who stated a strong case against “controlled” burning.  In addition to all of the things he said, the reality is right in front of us; are we going to be a part of nature and work in the forest or are we going to let the ways of the city rule us? (None of our presidents and most of our representatives have almost no background or cultural contact with the forests; they are city folk, plain and simple…no offense to them, of course).   There are millions of young people out of work or faced with hardships of all sorts (including obesity) and they are the natural inheritors of the forest and the natural choice for who can help fix them.  Sweden gets 40% of all of its energy from biomass (forest products) and we appear to be basing our economy on resisting being a part of the forest; we give  lots of jobs to firefighters, yes, but not to forest thinners, forest tenders or careful forest products gatherers, or research (our favorite thing) and training.  It is so beyond the scope of reason that we still charge people to go into the forests to help thin them (firewood gatherers).  Consider the sheer numbers of BTUs that go up in the fires like we are seeing all over the west and southwest (and even the east now).    It puts the science of global warming and the practice of ‘no burn days’ to absolute shame.  To consider that what we are seeing in front of us is nothing less than an  apocalyptic  sign of not a religious sorting out, but a sorting out of the basic underpinnings of our value systems; we are so afraid that we cannot control forest raping from large corporations and interests such as did the original damage, that we refuse to notice that we must learn to cure our own nature deficit disorders just as we begin to heal the wounds created in the past and also pave the way for a future whose economy is based on carefully, thoughtfully and stridently using the solar and renewable energy that the trees are just standing or lying there waiting for us to recognize.  Forests and clean water represent our wealth.  Period.   If biomass is not economical, then why do so many of us go out into the forest every year to gather firewood; and if that is so bad in terms of smoke,  then why do we stand here and allow the skies to fill with smoke every spring, summer and fall.  I personally ran up our hill three times last summer, shovel and cell phone in hand; ready to fight a fire that ‘must be just over the hill because of the ash and smoke in the air’, only to realize the it was, again, the huge fire on the Arizona/New Mexico border, close to 200 miles away.  The ‘environmentalists’, bless their hearts, sit  speechless with hat (and a lawyer, maybe a camera) in hand.   We have and can create the green and sustainable nature-based methods to do this.  Hey, kids, have you ever seen the cool equipment they use to do biomass work around the world; you can throw away your game boys  and thoughts of joining the army and join the war against foolish forestry.  You can design really cool access roads for smaller rigs; do induced meandering  work in the upper watersheds, invent and work superior energy producing systems that create heat, compost and methane; find beauty and peace up in the hills and mountains of the world; find ways to use those batteries, electric vehicles, steam engines, wood fired vehicles, on the spot wood charged electric chainsaws and electric dozers and pick-ups.   Spend the spring, summer and fall living with your  cool comrades of both sexes and do something important at the same time.   Build trails and learn about one-rock dams and study biology and economics and do accounting, study and do agriculture and controlled grazing experiments…in the field.   Let the controlled burn be in a woodstove or generator.  I also want to throw in with Aldo Leopold and the concept of developing a “Land Ethic” and a forest’s “Bill of Rights” as we do this.   May the forest be with you!

-Thor Sigstedt (60) now climbs the escarpment on his property every year and harvests firewood;  climbing up with a rope and  rolling the logs down.  He has done controlled grazing, forest products gathering and watershed restoration of all sorts for  a few dozens of years , as well as routinely creating rustic art and furniture.

The Windmill

Land's heart is creek;
Susurrous sounds of infinite eddies;
Spelling life, shape changing daily;
The place to take the  ducks
For soul regeneration and chest repair

Built heart being The Windmill
 and the Tower, pumping, again.....
Water and marking time in circular fashion

Do you know how hard it is to get four strong 30 foot 6 x 6s
And bolt on 2 x 10 cross braces, X's in Golden Mean ?
Carrying the turn of the century on our backs,
bonding with the craftsmen who designed gears and pitmans and
Babbit bearings, sucker rod and stuffing boxes,
back when cast iron was king, history turning to make way
For steel
do you know how hard it is to make a new "sail" ?
The old guy at the sheet metal place does,
"Do not bring me another one", says he,
"I had to cut those by hand and my hands hurt"

Do you know how to erect a 30 tower?Or climb one for that matter?
Well neither did I till 31 years ago.
Do you know how scary it is up there,
Begging the questions of death and disaster?
Well neither did I having given up rock climbing
After that episode with Monique up in Cape Breton.
...Bonding with the mast climbers of yore at sea,
borrowing their descriptions of what is happening
In the Wind.

And, cupful by cupful, breathe by breathe, whisper and gale;
the Windmill spins and groans, sounding for all intents and purposes
Like a whale
Dryland leviathan skeleton
Picturesque archetypal phenomenon;
water oozing from the pipe to feed the forests
"We" planted, quench the thirst and beat the drought.

The grown children remember it with chills and twinges
As they ruminate and visualize where they came from,
their memory spinner, Guardian and Constant.
Giant weather vane for all to see,
Perch for feathered friends in calm weather
They even told me so

And it is a monument; put on maps everywhere
Like Camel Rock or Morphy Lake
Like a natural spring; gotta know where they are.....
Like a watercress patch or a stand of ponderosas,
Like the old bulldozer with its front bucket,
Like a husband or a wife or child;
take photos at every chance as they are so beautiful
in this light and that

A mystery like a ship in the fog
A friend of many years who has watched you grow
And then grow old and you them.
Has been there for you and you for it.
Part of your life, like dandylions, blue flax, sunflowers
Part of your soul like windy days,  rain and water

Part of your work, like your shop, your truck or your children
Something you would sorely miss if they were gone
Tragic as you ponder what you did wrong along the way
Like that burro that died young; only 25
So many years being there and then the dying  silver-grey donkey
staring at you, leaning like a drunkard against the crawler
Seconds from the final fall that spelled the end
In ways only I, perhaps, will ever understand
Leaving a hole where  a whirring stood

They say it is hard to kill a Swede
and I say it is hard to kill a donkey
Hard to hit the bullseye, Co, they shoot at the little" o"
way up there; too tempting it seems,
like tormenting burros
And easy to take a windmill for granted
Thanks to Aermotor's tough design
Rural gift.......of water and ...to be...
The heart of the land and the friend of
The homesteader......Part of.......
The Land Ethic

Aldo Leopold's Legacy

Aldo Leopold’s Legacy

A film celebrating Aldo Leopold’s life history and thoughts was just screened at the NM Land , Office, with our beloved public lands commissioner, Ray Powell, giving his nod. The film is named “Green Fire” which is derived from a moment in time when Leopold was in his 20s and a forest ranger in Arizona or New Mexico and his party had just shot (as they routinely did) a Mexican Grey Wolf and he saw a “green fire” in the dying wolf’s eyes. What the movie makes clear is that it took a lifetime of experience being in close contact with our government, our culture and the land itself to come to some powerful conclusions about what, I think, he coined, a “Land Ethic”. What he came up with was a forward thinking notion that our relation to the land needs some rethinking and redoing. This was very interesting to me as I begun an experiment similar to his Sand County, Wisconsin one some 31 years ago out here along the Galisteo Creek , in Spirit Valley. The experiences here and the lessons I have drawn through this and my resulting thoughts and research has led me to pretty much the same conclusions as Leopold’s; that our connection to the land is critical for the survival of our culture; that the quality of the soil is the ultimate goal and concern; that the interaction and view of nature as a complex dynamic which depends on diversity; that the aesthetics of our solutions is a critical part of the formula for “correct behavior” ; that developing a “Land Ethic” is what needs to be done. How does this play out in my life? I, first of all, have consciously understood that what I have attempted to do here on our 40 acre property surrounded by wilderness with ½ mile of creek through our property; is an experiment that not everyone would feel comfortable doing but my background had let me do it without the kinds of modern cultural constraints that are often stumbling blocks. It was coming from a family of artists and early pioneers in alternate life styles and being a part of the “back to the land” movements that had a surge in the 60s and 70s and was strong in New Mexico; we were able to learn to build our own house out of adobe or other interesting techniques and materials; laying brick on brick or whatever materials we could find to make a shelter in the time honored tradition as embodied by Henry David Thoreau or my stepfather, Ken Kern. We were wanting to integrate ourselves more into the land, as embodied by John Muir and our American heritage. We were beginning to realize that our connection with nature was very important and powerful as exemplified by a lot of the Native American cultural thinking. I begun to see by shepherding donkeys for nearly twenty years – all kinds of connections to the natural world as we maneuvered on the land; doing controlled grazing; working the ranch from top to bottom to keep them and the land sustained. The creek and water changed from day to day, the quality of the soil determined the health of the plant life, the varieties that were either here and were planted here became a consuming interest, the animals around were mesmerizing, the seasons and floods and droughts became intense and very real and how they affected our lives. How to “work” the land became the challenge; what to harvest, when, how, how intensely. But what I drew from Leopold was a knowledge that what was desired was not pure wilderness without humans, not a carefully tended and rowed “garden” like , perhaps, an English landscape, not a purely engineered set of solutions that involved lots of concrete and steel, but the goal in my eyes was deeply related to the aesthetics of the solutions. I have, for instance, an aversion to the amputated look of cut limbs and tree trunks and make a special point of not cutting things in a way that blare out that zero look everywhere. I try to use materials and methods that blend in with the landscape as I try to reduce erosion and assist the banks of the river, for instance. The roads tend to curve and be blending into the visual look of the place, etc. etc. I believe that this lack of attention to the aesthetics is very often a stumbling block in our society. For some reason our sense of aesthetics is not as refined as I have seen in Japanese culture, for instance, where concepts of wabi sabi and natural beauty are present. I have developed concepts such as: use native rocks and materials for landscaping, be very careful what signs look like, front and back, be careful not to obscure the grand views of the cliffs and hills, do not put just any kind of gravel down, be careful not to pull just every weed and grass that seems not civilized as those weeds are often the prettiest things around. Kochia, for instance, our most ubiquitous plant/weed was originally brought here as an ornamental known for its wonderful red look in the fall. The plant is desired by horses and donkeys for food and is often the first placeholder in disturbed soil.
Tamarisk is a wonderful source of colorful twigs in rustic furniture design. Keep the invaluable bone yard somewhat contained in one area so as not to spread the junk all over the land. Some items of aesthetics are very personal, though, and so what might pass as fine in my eyes might be a terrible eyesore in yours, so that needs to be understood. I have also taken a very different course of thought in regards to the so-called alien species of plants, valuing them in a way much different than the garden variety environmentalists do. In fact I take a quite different stance than most environmentalists I have encountered; being often more in touch with using and living in the landscape as opposed to wanting to , for instance, just hike in it or camp in it or photograph it (although being a photographer can be a great tool for examining the aesthetics of a place).

So, there is no end to the subjects that can be addressed and Aldo Leopold helps address them in many ways that I enjoy as I work on my “Land Ethic”.

I close with an excerpt from something I copied a few years ago:

“Government has pursued constant programs to reduce or eliminate locoweed. We favored cattle without realizing we were making a choice. It was the great University of California scientist Starker Leopold that noted that loco weed was essential to the reproduction of quail. It was Starker’s father, Aldo Leopold. Who made the key statement on caution, “The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces”. My own thinking can be quite biased. I tend to consider the invasive plant tamarisk as unredeemed evil. Yet, in the last issue of Desert Reporter we had an article pointing out that sometimes an endangered bird, the Southwest willow flycatcher, will choose to nest in tamarisk. The author, Pat Tennent, told us how to be cautious when removing tamarisk. Our hunting laws still place few or no restrictions on the hunting of varmint (foxes, coyotes, badgers, etc.) because varmints will catch and eat the farmer’s chickens. Intelligent farmers have learned that if all the varmints were killed, the varmints’ prey –rodents- would eat all the crops.”