ETERNAL FOREST

From a poem by Wendell Berry

How long does it take to make the woods?
As long as it takes to make the world.
The woods is present as the world is, the presence of
all its past, and of all its time to come.
It is always finished, it is always being made, the act
of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction.
It is part of eternity, for its end and its beginning
belong to the end and the beginning of all things,
the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning.

A forest is constantly beginning and ending. A giant redwood begins to die, shoots come up from the roots, reaching for the sun and the sky. Go into the woods, Find a clearing where a pine or fir or hemlock has found its final resting place. But that tree is not alone. It's a home to new life. Mushrooms, little bushes, insects, birds.

That's why I believe it is impossible to practice sustainable forestry. We take out what would support the next of living things. The big timber companies turn a forest into a monoculture using herbicides that poison not only the earth in the tree plantation but anyone and anything living near by.What a world.