I am a forester. Foresters try to raise forests that serve not them, but their children's children, and theirs. If I did not have faith in the future, I wouldn't waste my time--more properly, wouldn't have wasted my time since I no longer practice but still have faith.
I had breakfast with my pastor this morning, and he agrees with me.
It is not over.
It is only beginning. This is not the first time I've had to call on my principles:
A Prayer For Non-Believers
I gaze through the windshield of the DeHavilland Beaver. All around me a forest of islands lies sparkling in the sun. Below, my destination: the Corner Bay Career Camp for young Alaskans interested in natural resource careers. Sick at heart and disillusioned at what is happening to the [federal agency] I made a sixth-grade decision to join, I wonder if I should have come. I fear that my anger will frighten the young people.
The Greeks have arrived in the belly of a wooden horse. It is brightly painted and attractive – a gift for fair Helena and the City of Troy. This is the most exciting opportunity of our time, they say. Can I counsel young people to take up forestry when the citadel I knew as the [agency that employed me] is viewed as a bunch of blocks that can be rebuilt in any shape or just torn down and scattered?
Next day with 19 young people I drive past a waning deck of logs, diminished while lawyers, politicians, and re-inventers have their say. We drive past Corner Creek, past brown bears feasting on salmon, and past a Sitka black-tailed deer watching us from a new forest that was born here not so long ago.
Soon the youngsters and I are plotting a course through a field of weathered stumps.
My mind drifts. Suspending disillusionment, I slip away from the reality of the moment.
Like slow motion in a dream, like an old time movie, like a newsreel run backwards, I see what happened here in this place. In my mind, fallen giants who found their way to the mill have magically reappeared. Taken down from the shapes of books and boxes, homes and churches, they reassemble as the living cathedral that once stood here. Magically, they spring back onto the stump one by one. I see the sawyers shut down their saws as they back away from each tree. Then I see them retreat in reverse motion back to their pickups, and drive off backwards into camp.
They are gone, maybe forever.
All is quiet, and I am alone in the forest.
Suddenly the newsreel reverses itself, running on fast-forward faster than ever. A bit of forest is instantly felled once again. The trees – hewn into the shape of logs – rise into the sky under helicopters, finding their way onto trucks and momentarily to the sea in big rafts.
For one shining instant, I see a large group of young people surveying the scene. Then they too are gone.
The forest grows, inexorably, toward the sky. Shadows of brown bear and Sitka deer flit through the underbrush like bats. Once or twice a fisherman or hunter hurries by in the jerky motions of an old-time movie, and often people with packs and cameras.
Inevitably, the careening image comes to an abrupt halt. The forest is dark and dense again, not unlike the forest that stood here – how long ago?
A lone figure in hardhat and vest stands on an ancient stump. I see by her outfit that she is a forester, like I was long ago and far away. By the lift of her gaze I see that something of what I believed has survived. What decisions face her, I wonder?
She twists a cold shaft of Swedish steel into the heart of a proud Sitka spruce. Extracting a slender core, she reads the legacy of growth and nods approvingly. Then she measures the tree with her tape and jots a note on her clipboard.
Urgency pushes through my delicious dream. I have my own problem here. What do I say to these young people? My heart feels emptied of wisdom, yet the oracle of history is open.
One by one ideas spill out like ghost-soldiers from the belly of the Trojan Horse. I confront them one by one. But these ideas are not ghosts – they are too new and too real.
And so wrong.
‘We held town hall meetings in Sacramento, Minneapolis, and Washington DC,’ they said. ‘This agency has fallen from grace, and we’re going to re-invent it.’
They are looking for change – not the slow, sure, and relentless change of a forest growing again and again where one grew before, but a kind of quantum leap into the unknown.
In my mind I come to a precipice. A wisp of fog rises up. The vertigo of disillusionment overcomes me as I peer into the abyss. I cannot do this. I should have told them no.
The young people, restless, begin dancing on the stump of a giant Sitka spruce.
I snap to consciousness; the newsreel fades instantly to a field of weathered stumps.
“What do you think of this?” I ask.
Quieting down, the young people murmur amongst themselves. One raises her hand hesitantly. “See, there is already a new tree growing here at my feet.”
Yes, I can go on. There is one believer.
My heart thumping, I look at her, then at my boots, the sky, and finally at the crowd of young expectant faces.
“If you want a career in forestry,” I begin, “get a grip on your beliefs. The winds of change are screaming. They are screaming at YOU. “If you think a career in forestry is a picnic in the woods, do yourself a favor and get a job at Disneyland. Smiling people there re-invent Fantasyland every day with trees made of wire and concrete. And even they stand on values craved by each new generation.
“A forestry career is not something that you do to earn a living, it’s something that you ARE.
“No matter what your role in it, you are a farmer.
“You are a FARMER. . . . . . Not just any farmer, but one whose labors are based on this immutable principle: the labor you invest, the sweat you pour out, the beliefs you defend, the crop you nourish – will outlive not just you and your children, but your children’s children, and maybe theirs. And maybe theirs. Under it all, the heartbeat of the land. And hopefully for some, the [federal agency that employed me].
“This agency was perfected over the last one hundred years because you, the brown bear, and the deer all needed a home from the living forest. The shared values that formed this agency during that time made it a jewel in the crown of government, and everyone could see it shine.
“Now some people say those shared values are shopworn; the agency should reflect the entire spectrum of humanity, some of which is portrayed on the Saturday morning cartoons, graffiti on city walls far from the forest, and in lifestyle magazines once found only under-the-counter. They justify themselves on the six-o’clock news and find favor in the current halls of government. They have told their story well, and they see that the window of opportunity is open. They have sent out the Trojan Horse.
“’The Agency of the Future should be,’ they say, ‘ the employer of choice,’ not necessarily the employer of those who love the land. To make it attractive to those who care more for their lifestyles than this tiny tree here, they are willing to sacrifice proven dedication and loyalty.
“’Better leaders are to be found,’ they say, ‘amongst the ranks of executives who never set foot in the forest. Look to IBM and General Motors – their machines work better and cost less.’ Forget any notion that your leaders should have proven their love for the land by investing their lives in it.
“And hoping you will not recognize a coup d’tat, they will ask you to express your preferences in the matter. The choices will be given names that you recognize: Back to Basics; Continuous Adaptation; Convene and Facilitate; Global Conservation Stewardship; High Value Ecosystem Integrity. As if the Agency did not stand for those very things for the last one hundred years.
“All this will be confusing because it is cloaked in the short-sighted passion of a high-born vision. These are articulate people. What they say is believable. And not all of what they say is wrong.
For God’s sake, do your own thinking!
“Nothing else that I say today is as important. Do your own thinking. Do your own thinking! Do your own thinking! Do your own thinking!
“Your principles will hold you up.
“If you believe that your grandchildren will bless this tiny tree grown tall in their lifetime, then you can be a forester. If you love the forest your home was crafted from, if the hazard of battle does not turn your heart, then you can be a forester. If there is an organization proud enough to call itself the Agency, there can be a place for you.
“If not, I’ll see you in Disneyland.”
I step down from the log, utterly spent. I ride back to camp deep in thought, the prayer of one believer ringing in my ears : “See, there is already a new tree growing here at my feet.”
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This essay is a personal opinion. It is not to be considered a criticism of the reinvention team, official policy, nor of any person. At the Corner Bay Career Camp I talked to the young people about principles, loving the land, and growing trees, not about reinvention.
But if the reinvention team had been there, I would have opened my heart to them.
This is what they would have seen.
Post Script, 2004.
The preceding essay, written after the 1996 career camp, must be taken in the context of the times. It was a heartbreaking time for me, one that I never hoped to experience.
If the Federal Building in Juneau still exists in 2096 when the time-lock capsule is due to be opened, someone will again read these words. Maybe it won’t make any sense to them, but maybe it will make them stop and think.
I wonder what forestry will have become by then. Will it be anything like I dreamed of?
I hope so.
Post Script, 2012.
The principles that held me up then still hold me up. They are as sound as the granite on which I stand. Reinventors have been usurped by freeloaders living on Chinese money and the delusional belief that they can borrow their way into prosperity. Freeloaders may be usurped by jihadists, but they will immolate themselves because they love death more than they love life.
Liars and borrowers will not inherit the earth; truth will. The bedrock of principle is sound.
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