 Well, thanks for coming, everyone. Maybe people aren't in the mood to talk about the trees, but I'm excited to learn about the trees. Thank you for coming to tonight's talk with the commissioner of Vermont Forests, Parks, and Recreation, Michael Snyder. I just wanted to mention a few housekeeping items. Please mute or turn off your cell phones. If you need the restroom, it's located at the back of the store to the right of the back door. We will lock the front door to keep shoppers from coming and disturbing the event. The back door, which is this way, is open, so if you need to leave during the talk, you can use the back door. I'd like to thank Orca Media for filming tonight's event, and I'd like to let you know to sign up for our newsletter to be passed around. You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook to learn about other author events. Our next author event is October 1st. We will be hosting Archer Mayer with his 30th Joe Gunther book, and then for poetry lovers, save the date for October 8th. We will have Reuben Jackson and his new poetry collection, Scattered Clouts. So we're happy to have Michael here tonight to talk about a subject so dear to so many vermanders, I thought, trees, because there are more trees in the state of Vermont than there are people. So luckily we have Michael here to teach us about that. Each chapter in this new book Woods-Wise, An Exploration of Forests and Forestry, answers an important question that you may have spent your life wondering, such as, does a bumper crop of acorns predict a harsh winter? We need to know that. How long does it take to grow a Christmas tree, and what would I be getting into in case anybody wants to farm Christmas trees? And which trees make the best firewood? I thought that was a particularly important one. I don't have a wood stove now in the house that I owned, for many years, and I think I needed that information. I spent the first winter being very cold. In all seriousness, the book is quite comprehensive, and I hope you pick up copies for yourselves or for a friend. I think it would make a great gift, and the holiday season is coming up. Michael will be happy to sign books after his talk, and he'll be answering questions as well. Michael Snyder has served as commissioner of Vermont Forests, Parks, and Recreation since January 2011. For 14 years prior to that, he was the Chittenden County Forester, providing land stewardship assistance to private landowners and municipalities. He also taught forestry courses at the University of Vermont for 12 years, and wrote the Woods-Wise column for Northern Woodlands Magazine for nearly two decades. Previously, he worked in forest ecosystem science at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest and in land surveying and forest management in New Hampshire, Mexico, and Sweden. He received both his bachelor's and master of science degrees in forestry from the University of Vermont. He owns and manages a 91-acre forest in Essex County, where he always learns and sometimes practices what he's learned about the woods. I thought that was funny to include. He's an avid outdoorist, especially enjoying hunting, fishing, skiing, water sports, backpacking, and camping. And he also really likes food and music. So he's like an all-around everything kind of guy. So I think if you have questions about any of that, right, we'll be happy to talk about. So please help me welcome Michael Snyder. Thank you, Samantha, and your upon books. And thank you all. What a food, I have to be honest with you. Full disclaimer, never done this before. But I'm really happy to do it. And thanks for being here for your interest, whatever that interest may be. I thought I would maybe begin by just kind of talking a little bit about the book and the work that led to the book and how it came to be and my previous work that created this. And then maybe read a little bit and take questions, hoping that works. And especially for the reading part, if you've read it or parts of it or I've looked at it and you want to suggest something, a particular thing I'd love to go there and read what you might be interested in, I'm happy to pick something too. Kind of curious by show of hands, how many of you have, excuse me, woods of your own? Anyone? Great. Okay, sort of? Yeah, I'm kind of, okay, any good snack, that's good. Welcome. This is the Woodswise talk. You're in the right place? Yes, that's right. It's not who I am, thank you. Just getting started. Mike Snyder, writer of Woodswise, and just saying, maybe I'll begin there with a little bit of background. But thinking if you have some requests and what you'd like to hear about, welcome, come on in, we're a work in progress. As Samantha indicated in the sort of background, I worked, so I'm the Commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation. It's a department within state government, one of three departments in the Agency of Natural Resources. It's a huge responsibility and incredible honor to be the leader of a department with a mission and the people that we work with that's so Vermont, as maybe was mentioned, and really proud of that, and trying to, I guess the name, I would say Forest Parks and Recreation says what you need to know. It kind of captures it all. Our statutory mission, we're sort of charged with overseeing forest health, forest productivity, forest use in the state, and to promote understanding of forests and to select all forestry, the peaceful coexistence of people and forests for productive outcomes. That's actually our charge, and it's the state policy to have a connection with forests and to do that in an economic way even. That's a big part of our work. We also oversee, operate these gems, these 55 gems throughout the state of the Vermont State Park System. Anybody, state park visitors, goers, happy, they're amazing, aren't they? We have a million visitors to Vermont State Parks. There's 625,000 of us, and a million people come to sleep outside in state parks and be with their families and friends, and great things happen from that. So again, so proud to be part of that mission, and then there's recreation, Forest Parks and Recreation, which is all of our culture of outdoor activity and vigorous outdoor life, whether it's, and it's such a great span of just people going outside and moving their bodies together and with productive outcomes, again, health, wellness, local economic activity and a connection to the land. These are all super important and really are part of our culture. And again, so proud to be the commissioner of this department with that mission. It's been a few years now, two governors, but previous to that, you know, I am a forester still, I hope, and was. I worked for this department as a county forester, which is a service role. There's one in each county to provide technical assistance to private land owners, and that's really sort of how this all happened, was through my love of the woods and my fascination with people in their woods, and that was the role. Just to meet with land owners, it's a pretty darn good job. Meet with land owners, interesting people with beautiful land, walk through that land with them, listen to them, understand what they're interested in, and try to help them. You sleep pretty well at night when you have a job like that. And it was a great honor. And during that time, by visiting with land owners at their request, not in a regulatory way, hey, I have questions, why is this, what can I do about that? Visiting with them, listening to them, they just had great questions and would ask things, and noted those questions and had this abiding interest in writing, particularly about the natural world and people coexisting with it, and it done some freelancing and wrote a few feature articles for this fledgling magazine, Vermont Woodlands, that became Northern Woodlands. And as I continued to work with these land owners and thought, this is a great list of, these people ask great questions through their eyes of what they're seeing. And it's very important to help connect people, I believe, and demystify the woods and science and make it accessible. It became a growing passion. And when the magazine said, you know, we're thinking about developing a column, this resulted in them saying, well, how about you stop doing these features and maybe do a column in every issue that addresses one of these questions that you ascertain from land owners. And that's how it was born. So for almost 20 years, I wrote a quarterly column called Woods Wise. Little play on words, we want people to be wise about the woods, but we also want people to embrace the wise and wherefores of the woods and why is this and how does that work? And it was, I jumped at it and it was really great. So we had this, the editors back and forth about, well, how about this? And what about that? I'd offer these questions and then each issue was a question. Each edition, my column was one page, 750 words with a question that I was supposed to answer. And then I said, how about a dress? Can we address a little attitude here? Because you know what? The fact is, we know and have learned so much about, begins with forests are incredibly complex. They're characterized by complexity and dynamism. They're changing all the time. They're incredibly diverse and complicated. And, well, sorry, I don't want to go down too far of that road and get, I know we have a time frame. There's so much to explore there, but explaining, trying to help people see and access and we'd settle on a question and I'd tackle it and it was a lot of fun. Thinking about explaining how the process worked but I'll save that and we can get to that. So, here I am here today looking back, we started this column. It ran for almost 20 years and wrote 80 something of them and it seemed it was well received. I got good feedback and it was just incredibly, incredible learning opportunity for me to engage and then dig into stuff and find answers and think about how it could work and then try to express it in a way in 750 words that somebody might want to read. Wonderful opportunity. It ran, it was wonderful. And then I became commissioner and I tried to keep calling and it was just like too much. So, kind of pulled back and said, you know, I think we'll put this to rest but how about we compile this? And that's what this is, it's a compilation of all of these 63, I think it's 63 kind of best of columns refreshed, some of them things have changed, kind of went back and said, well, that's actually different now and add to that or this person has a different title now. So, we refreshed, we edited and compiled with some photographs, put them in an order, wrote a forward and introduction and have a book and it's really wonderful, did I mention that? It's really great. So, what a thrill to be here to be able to share some of it with you. Again, keeping in mind, this is the department and Bondcliffe books as publisher in a collaborative relationship. This is a copyright state of Vermont. This is kind of your book, you do have to buy it. But, I'm really proud of that and I owe a great debt of gratitude before I move on about all the foresters that are colleagues that have helped answer questions, scientists, landowners, critics, all of them have helped me become a better writer, a better forester, better communicator and to make this book happen. So, it's wonderful to have your name on a book about a subject you're passionate about your whole life but it has to be said that this doesn't happen alone and I'm very grateful to so many who helped do it. But, here we are with this book which is a compilation of these columns over two decades put in one place and I'm really psyched to share a little bit of it with you all. Sound good? I've been thinking about columns or questions. I'm really interested in responding to your questions or interest in this and I don't know what that is and I don't know how much you might be thinking. So, I'm happy to choose something to read as a sample to maybe get things going but I'd love it if somebody said, well, I read this and liked it or I looked at the list and I'm curious about that. Is there any such? Anybody? Wondering about, is there something I could read that would be of particular interest? Anyone? There's no wrong answer here. Then I'm happy to choose, shall I read something? What's your favorite? Favorite, I was hoping somebody would ask. And it's really hard to answer that because it really is about the audience. It kind of makes, I mean that's the point, is the whole point here is to help demystify, there's this great green mass out there, Vermont is the Green Mountain State, we're 78% forested and it's easy to kind of just sort of see as a blur. And that's the whole thing, helping people. The point is to help people get past that and look closer and understand that it is complex and it's changing. We know an enormous amount about this but there's a lot we still don't know. That was part of why can I address questions and not answer them to embrace that uncertainty that the mystery might even say magic still that exists. So my favorite is the ones that somebody else learned from or more importantly got inspired to go outside and just be in the woods, whether it doesn't even have to be about forestry, it can be just taking a walk. But be there and know that it's welcoming and in the introduction I write about the difference between in my mind the words forest and woods. This is woods-wise, not forest-wise and as they say, there's a difference to me. Forests are big and complex and kind of there's a scientific sense about them. Forests intrigue me. The woods, smaller, closer, familiar, kind of comfortable, woods welcome me. Woods are these places within big forests that we can get to know and that's where the magic happens. That's why we call it woods-wise. So my favorite is which one that interests you or that moved somebody, you haven't read it so you don't know that. So I hope you out, Jack. Take it on me. There's a few here that I have heard from people that have said, boy that's really, and what a throw too, by the way, to have somebody say I didn't know that, I'm interested in that and that really crystallized it for me. And I'm gonna name a couple by reading the question. Okay, we'll have a little crowdsourcing here. Does this work? Among those, I think there was a question, does a hilly acre contain more land than a flat one? This is the old idea that if, yeah, sure, Texas is big, but if you flattened out Vermont, we'd be right there, right? So, but how does that work? People have been interested in that. What causes those white splotches on tree bark? You take a hike through the woods and you see these white splotches. It's like snow, what is that stuck there? Is that bad for the trees? Is that a disease? That comes up a lot and apparently my answer to that satisfied some folks. I do have some favorites, I guess, when pressed. And I think, you know, I think it, but more about me and less about the reader, it's that it was so fun to learn about it. And one would be this question of, what are those blisters on the bark of balsam fir trees? I don't know where you're all coming from and what you know and I don't wanna go beyond, but like balsam fir is a really common tree in Vermont. It's one of our standard Christmas trees. Do you know what we mean by bark blisters? Like on the bark of a fir tree, there's these little protrusions. They're little bulges all over the bark. They're very common. What are those? That's one that seems to have captured people's attention. There's, you know, the mix here is tree physiology. How are trees built and how do they work? And then there's forest ecology. How do trees collectively function as a forest? And then there's silviculture and forestry. How do people interact with forests in a corrective way? Those are the three broad themes that I've addressed throughout this book. Is there one of those that you'd be most interested in? How trees work, how forests work, or how we work with forests? Just choose one for God's sake. Oh, forests? So, I'm gonna go. Which one? How the forests work for the economy. How the trees work amongst each other. I have a just choose one and I have a forest ecology. It's more fun than I thought it was gonna be. Okay, how about, I think I'm doing it. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go balsam fir. You okay with that? Yeah. Yeah, I'm super. Those blisters on the bark of balsam firs. Those bulging cysts on its otherwise very smooth, gray brown bark are a distinguishing characteristic of balsam fir. They're plastered all over most fir stems. Aside from the really young ones and the really old rough bark trees, bark blisters are found on nearly all balsam firs. As abundant and normal as needles, these blisters are thought to be helpful in the tree's defense system, especially against insects and pathogens. And people have made use of them for a very long time. Inside each fir blister is a fragrant, impossible not to think Christmas. Viscous, sticky, clear resin, also called pitch. It's not sap, which conifers also produce. Sap is mostly water with sugars, vitamins, hormones and enzymes. It serves a nutritive function in the tree. Resin is very different. It's more like turpentine than sap. At this point, we could discuss di-terpenoids and oleoresins and the like, but let's leave our comparisons to sap at this. Nobody makes delectable syrup from conifer resin. And archaeology fans everywhere know resin in its hardened, fossilized form as amber. All of our native and common conifers produce such resins, conifers being the evergreens. They all produce such resins, though how and where in the tree they are produced varies by groups of species. Resin in pines, spruces and larches, for example, exist in resin canals, elongated, tubular spaces within the wood. Fir resin, like that in hemlock and cedars, is found in the bark. Only rarely, in response to traumatic injury, will it be found within the wood. In fact, the absence of resin ducts in the wood of fir timber is used in identifying and sorting fir lumber from spruces. But despite their great abundance, fir blisters still stir some scientific debate about their function. Whereas some researchers have classified conifer resin as a hydrocarbon, a compound of cellular waste products, others deem it as a useful secretion, pointing to mounting evidence of its role in a range of protective functions. Evidently, these wastes defend the tree against a wide range of birds, mammals, insects and pathogens. For example, insects attempting to pierce the bark of a bosom fir to feed on the sweet sap in the wood inside are thwarted by that sticky goo in the bark. Not only does it physically trap insects and impede their inward progress, it has some toxicity as well. It has also been speculated that the highly antiseptic qualities of resin help prevent wood decay. Whatever debate remains about the mechanisms of resin's benefits to trees, there is a long list of the ways that people have made good use of balsam resin. Owing to its optical properties, it has a refractive index similar to ordinary glass, balsam was used as a medium for mounting microscope specimens and as a cement for optical systems like lenses and gun sights. For centuries, it was used as a fixative and a glossing agent on oil paintings and to waterproof pottery. Many a northern woodsman has started a fire or sealed a wound with it and no small amount of gear has been similarly patched. It has been used in dental procedures and cough syrups as a vapor to ease headaches and as an ingestible to ease stomach aches. In a pinch, it'll even do as a crude chapstick. Of course, now we have synthetics for most of these things, but they can't take the fun of ingenuity away and balsam resins deliver good entertainment. Sure, there's the traditional thumb press resulting in a sticky squirt aimed at your little brother. Push on them and out it comes. But there's more. Poke a fur blister with a small dead twig and get a little gob of fur resin on the end. Now drop that twig in a pool of water and be amazed at that quiet little resin rocket motorboat as the twig speeds away from you. The twig is propelled by the water-revoiding chemistry of the balsam resin. Who knew science could be so much fun? And you have that one. More than you ever wanted to know about balsam fur blisters? I think the point here is that, right, there's just a blister on a tree, but it's characteristic of the tree and people do ask and little kids do poke into it and it's really fun to get that stuff on your little sister or whatever, right? And yet, who knew it was like in microscopes and gun sites and people have used it for centuries. It has these legitimate properties and yet it's doing all this incredibly important work for the tree itself. And I think that's why I would choose this as a favorite of the essays that are, again, aimed at demystifying, I hope, making the science of it all, which is significant, accessible, enjoyable, but more than anything, connecting the people to the trees and the forests at every chance because we, you know, do you have a favorite tree that you can think of, a specific tree and not a species, but in your yard or nearby, right? Anybody get a favorite tree? You can all think of a tree that you would buy or like Sophie, that tree that you're imagining. You share 25% of your genes with that tree. We are connected with trees. Trees have been here a hundred before us, they'll be here beyond us and we are inextricably linked and utterly dependent on them. And I think that's the things, the people in forests. I've told students for years, forests are inscrutable in so many ways, they're complex. We've mentioned dynamism and complexity. Did I mention they're complicated? And they're the easy part. It's the people that are really challenging and I think that's the idea here is to bring the people to the woods, bring the woods to the people, whatever it takes, because we got this folks, and it's not that difficult and there's fun to be had as well. I think that's the idea here. I'll pause here. Have we stimulated any questions or suggestions? Yes, sir, please. I think this is beyond the scope of the book, but I'm curious, when is it appropriate to manage forests versus when is it appropriate to leave forest alone and not manage them at all? It's a fundamental question, a really good one. I appreciate it, it's not beyond the scope. I think to some extent as a forester, a proud forester about, again, that's to me, that's the peaceful coexistence of people in forests for productive outcomes. That's not just willy-nilly, it's not whatever, it's based on understanding how forests work and then being honest about wanting things, we have a lot of wood in our lives and an incredible amount of wood in our lives every day and we've been dependent on trees and forests for a really long time. So understanding all that and then understanding our connection to it, I think I've tried in each one of these to say, at some point, let's be honest, we need forests, forests don't need us. Never let a forester ever tell you that, well, you have to cut these trees because it's better for the forest. No, it's good for us. But we know how to do it in a way that can be good for a forest and can help a forest continue to be productive and for us and for all the other things for us too. So, yeah, but I want you to go whatever direction you wanna go with that. Yeah, I think, to me, as a forester, we have to acknowledge that we make, we are dependent on trees for products and we're dependent on forests for services like clean water, clean air, habitat, beauty and on and on. And again, we don't really, they don't need us, but we're involved. So it starts with that kind of honest like, okay, but let's find a way to do it right. I believe that's built on understanding how forests work and understanding that some places should be just left alone. And so the big picture to me, it's we've used this kind of triad model to call it, which is that think about a big extent of land, say Vermont. You could think maybe some places should just be left alone to be wild and self-willed and whatever they become, forests. And then some places should be maybe even intensively managed in a close and careful intelligent way for these productive outcomes would. And then the vast majority in between should be kind of something in between like very light touch, even more close and careful interactions and I think that's generally our approach here in Vermont is to find, certainly set aside the really sensitive places, that places that are not well suited to access or forestry operations and be really smart about that. And then what's left? Okay, some of these we should just set aside because we don't know everything. People in the future have a right to make some decisions. Let's leave some for others. The rest, let's be really smart about doing this in this again, this close, careful intelligent way, in a local way, based on an understanding of forest ecology. So it's gonna, you need the mix, I believe, and I think it's gonna vary by, the trick is where do we do each of these? And who decides? That is beyond the book. That's for a lot of your expertise. And I think that's where the people come in. We do this as a community, we understand what the big picture is, let's do this collaboratively, listen to each other, learn and make some hard decisions. We have a strong history of private property in the state and that is up and I think that's important. And so everyone gets to decide for themselves, but there's also this sort of commons that the water, the wildlife are everybody's, that's in law, and my trees are mine, and they're linked to the water in the wildlife. So I get to decide, so we wanna do it and whenever I decide it should be done in a way that, I get to swing my fist around, I suppose, and my right to do that ends at the tip of your nose. I think similarly about my wood, so I get to do what I want, but not if it's gonna pollute your water or screw up our habitat. So I think we have to accept that there's this sort of ethic of stewardship and responsibility to be one with the land and to not be ashamed of our needs from the land, but to always be thinking about what we would now call sustainability and how to keep it going. And that's rooted in understanding and in communication and then always trying to improve our approaches and how we do it. Sort of avoiding it, I guess, to some extent, because it's a really difficult question when you think about things like people's property rights and everyone has a different aesthetic and different sensibilities. I think there's room and we've proved it in this landscape, that's why Vermont looks as beautiful as it does today. We're about to enter a foliage time. We're so lucky, it's this annual reminder that we've inherited this from our parents and families and neighbors who've stewarded this land for a long time through active management and care. So I think we have this long history that says we can do this. New challenges, sure. I think the way is to be together, to be thoughtful and to be intelligent about it. I hope that's satisfying. So addressing rather than answering. Addressing, not answering. Yeah, I love it. Others, questions? Thoughts? Yes, sir? Yeah, you had a lot of what we inherited. If you look back 100 to 150 years ago, there was a lot of clear land. Do you deal with the history of that at all, with the fact that it's sheep grazing land? Yeah. So much of it. Yeah, this is so important to understand that what we see out there was not like this. It's changing and we have this incredible history of about 80% almost forced it. Hit point of the 1800s. We were at about 20% forced it. So exactly, owing to an agricultural conversion. Do we deal with it? You bet. I mean, does your book deal with it? Is that one of the, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, well, I would just say it does and I'll touch on one, but I think that we deal with it all the time today because any forest and any given time is an expression of the soils and geology and the hydrology, the sort of physical factors of the local place and the past use of the place. That sets the arc of the trajectory of where a forest will grow and become. So we have a forest today that is heavily impacted by that agricultural past, that cleared past. It's not the same forest by any stretch. It's diminished. There was a massive export of organic material, think wool, milk, hay, and then this massive loss of soil through poor practice. George Perkins Marsh was the first, you know, over-modern who signaled that we got to think about how we're working with this land here. So this land was rode hard and put away wet to be blunt. And yet how lucky are we that it's responded with this resilient forest recovery? I don't know how many times we get to go to that well, so we are dealing with an understanding of that it's been worked and we are lucky to have what we have and we need to think about how we move that forward. That's how we deal with it because it is a profound influence on the health and productivity and composition, the very nature of any forest is its past and we've had quite a past. There is a story in here, an essay in here that speaks to this. And I wonder if you like, I wouldn't mind going at it. We want to hear this one that speaks exactly to this in the book. I'm gonna find it. Yeah, with me. Yes, what did New England's forests look like prior to European settlement? Which is a point that historians point to is like there were native peoples and then that was a big change. So, what did these forests, our New England's forests look like prior to European settlement? Short, that's one of the best things about these, there's a couple pages. Let's do that. What did New England's forests look like prior to European settlement? Nobody remembers. So instead, historical ecologists rely on hints and clues from the past to make inferences about what New England's forests may have looked like before European settlements spread inland and upland from the coast in 1620. Some of these clues remain as actual forests, the scarce few fragments of old growth or primeval or the virgin forests still standing today, about 1% of our landscape. Interesting and valuable as they are, these remnants may not provide an accurate view of the past. After such, they may not, I mean, sorry, as such, they may not be at all typical of the pre-settlement forest. Still, other notions of what those earlier woods look like come from theoretical models and projections based on observations of forest tendencies. Again, these have merit, but they're really closer to guesses than actual evidence. Actual evidence is what freelance ecologist Charles Cogbill, native, resident of Plainfield, Vermont. Actual evidence is what freelance forest ecologist Charles Cogbill and two colleagues from the Harvard Forest were looking for when they explored a completely different set of clues left from the past. They examined evidence left in writing by the first of the European woodsmen to see much of New England's forests. It turns out that the first surveyors charged with dividing up the original towns kept records and notes about the vegetation through which they traversed. Though relatively obscure and widely scattered, these surveyors' notes allow, when brought together, a reconstruction of what New England's forest vegetation looked like at that time. Cogbill and colleagues poured over original records of colonial New England land division surveys. They read through records, notes, and maps from the original lotting surveys in 359 towns between the Andrews Goggin River in Maine and New York's Hudson River, and tallied every mention of a witness tree or other reference to vegetation. They then sorted these 150,000 individual tree citations, checked them, analyzed them statistically before publishing their results in the Journal of Biogeography. As Cogbill explains, we certainly have far less forest today than at Pre-Sediment, and we've added some new species, but still our forests today look in several respects remarkably like those surveyors saw. They were made up of mostly the same tree species as today, but in different proportions, says Cogbill. Some have really come on. Species like popl, birch, and cherry are much more abundant today, and red maple has increased tremendously. Cogbill says that such games have been at the expense of some other species. In the North, beach abundance has decreased significantly, and in the South, oak is far less common today. Cogbill says his study does refute some preconceived notions of the Pre-Sediment forest. Despite its reputation, white pine was not the dominant species, he says, not ecologically. Cogbill thinks that white pine's economic importance and the surveyors' interest in it helped to skew our sense of its abundance. They were looking for it, and it was common in places, but not everywhere. In fact, it was rare on the uplands. It was nowhere near the dominant species. Similarly, Cogbill says that chestnut was not important over the entire region. Chestnut reached about 20% in Southern New England, but it barely showed up in New Hampshire and Maine, and it was even less common in Vermont. And remember that squirrel that was said to have walked all the way from Maine to Mississippi without ever touching the ground? That's a myth, says Cogbill. He explains that even structurally, those earlier forests look much like today's. It wasn't a great expanse of open park of endless giant trees, he says, and it wasn't a deadly thicket either. It was a forest interrupted with many gaps and made up of many mid-sized trees, a few lunkers, that's a technical term. And lots of regeneration due to frequent small-scale disturbances and, more rarely, larger disturbances. Cogbill points out that some of those disturbances were the result of Aboriginal human activities and that, evidently, the average tree in the pre-settlement forest may have been slightly bigger than today's, but it was still in the range of what you see today, he says. Are those survey records a perfect and complete picture of the pre-settlement forest? No, says Cogbill. It's more of a partial snapshot, but it does improve our view of what sort of forest those settlers had to deal with and what they saw on arrival. Improving that view is more than academic. According to Cogbill, it should inform our forestry. Management, like ecology, requires a sense of knowing a place, he says. If you understand its history, including its natural history, you have a better sense of its future. Does that help? Yeah. So what does this mean? We, our forest is different. It's, we've seen species shifts, what, it kind of looks a lot the same, but there aren't these subtle differences. I love this for so many reasons that we have to look past to know the future and that we have models and computers and smart people all over thinking about this. And they went and looked at these surveyors' notes and did the hard work of just kind of saying, what did they see? And then did the systematic and very statistical approach to sorting it and then interpreting it. And again, connecting people to it, the people that did that and then how beneficial it is for us to have this sense of our history and what it means. These are the themes that I continue to try to weave through the work. Others, Kate. Can you just read one of your favorites of the people-woods relationship? Yes, I can, I'm gonna be happy to. I have to find it. Shouldn't it put so many in here, huh? This is a classic, I think. In my experience, listen up. Can your woods be too tidy? A landowner once invited me to visit his property to see all the good work he'd done extending his landscaping efforts from his yards into the surrounding woods. He was pleased with his work and eager for the county forester to see how well he had cleaned up the woods and improved the health of those woods by removing and chipping or burning all that ugly dead and rotting stuff. He thought maybe we could use it as a demonstration site for his neighbors. So I went. And sure enough, that landowner had indeed made some traumatic changes to a few acres of woods bordering his well manicured yard. But I was considerably less enthusiastic than he was and I was at a loss for a gentle way to explain to him that his tidying had done nothing to improve the health of his woods. But in fact, he may have done some real damage to its health. As he showed me around from stump to branch scar, noting with pride how easy it was to walk and see through these woods now, I didn't really know how to say, well sure, but now there's so much less to see. All I could muster was a head mount here and an IC there. Then he gave me my big opening. He told me that before doing all this work he used to see woodpeckers and warblers in the woods, but not anymore. This man truly valued the woods and he enjoyed working in them with the best of intentions. But somehow he had failed to recognize that the full value of all that so-called mess, he had missed the connection between dead trees and woodpecker food, between a dense shrub layer and nest sites for black-throated blue warblers. The conversation that followed wasn't necessarily easy, but now it at least had a new context. He could see his woods in a new light. And by the end of our walk, he had a different work plan for the bit of woods he had to work on the other side of his house. If your only interest is in the neat and tidy and you just can't abide a natural mess, there's really no argument. You certainly are free to clean up those woods. But if you're interested in the health of the land too and if your aesthetic sensibility has room for a bit of death, decay, and disarray, then you'll be glad to know there is a way to have it both ways. It's a matter of blending forestry with traditional landscaping. This sort of management hybrid is sometimes called wood-scaping. It incorporates an understanding of forest ecology, a sense of how the forest functions fully, into landscaping activities. It stresses values like species diversity, the importance of retaining some dead and dying trees, and the need to keep vegetation in several vertical layers instead of just one canopy level. It's particularly effective when applied in those transition zones between a traditionally landscaped yard and the woods beyond. Yes, of course it's nice to see into the woods from the yard and there's nothing wrong with cutting some understory vegetation or pruning some dead branches or even removing a particularly messy timelift down woody material. All of which may be obstructing your view or your walk from your yard into your woods. You just try to leave some of these things recognizing that they're all part of a healthy forest. This hybrid approach can involve all kinds of management activities. Possibilities are nearly endless. It includes thinning to remove disease or unsightly trees and enhance the growth of remaining specimen trees. Or perhaps pruning some branches to improve sight lines and tree stem quality. Removed vegetation might then be locked and scattered neatly on the forest floor. This is important for moisture retention, nutrient cycling, and habitat enhancement for many insects, amphibians, and mammals, and is far healthier than burning and chipping. Woodscaping might also include planting trees and shrubs to add diversity and visual appeal. It might not mean weed-whacking a path of ferns. Or not brush-arging an area of whips and brambles. This modified landscaping approach can involve any or all such activities, but it does so with an attitude. It is an attitude of understanding, or at least a desire to understand, that your woods, even at the yard's edge, are more than something you look at. They are living communities of creatures, each playing important, if sometimes unknown, roles with far-reaching implications for land health in your yard, and for the rest of your life. For land health in your yard, and beyond. These places do not have to be neat and tidy to be healthy. The interaction thing. That was really memorable for me, because it was kind of, I don't know if it comes through, but it was kind of tense. I'm thinking, how do I break it to this guy? He's loving this, and it's wonderfully, he loves it, but man, we have a problem here, and it's very calm. You find a way, you meet him where he's at, you find what he cares about, help him see how that's connected, and he becomes this great champion, and he tells his neighbors, and he demonstrates it. So that's my favorite in that category, because of that. Great? Who's got one? Eddie? What's a witness tree? A witness tree is, think about when land surveyors go and mark lines and corners with monuments, like an iron rod, or a stone monument on a corner, say where lines turn, right, with me. They witness those important turning points with facing trees. So they usually would look for three trees, and they would glaze three stripes on the inside, on the facing side of this tree that faces the corner, that tree that faces the corner, and that tree. Those are called witness trees, so that when someone comes and pulls up the pipe, or, I don't know, something happens, it gets buried in a windstorm or whatever, I suppose that would be tricky. The idea is you still have these backups of the witness tree when you can't find the monument. Many times in the beginning, the monument was on a ground level, you can't find it after a few years of leaves falling branches, but you have the witness trees that witness the corner. That's it. Do we still use that system? Yep, yep. More with flagging now, three bands on each witness tree, sometimes blazing the tree itself, but yeah, it's sort of common practice for Lancer Bayers to witness them, the corners, by blazing the trees that face them. Can I have a little clap? I'd like to say thanks for your interest, for coming out and listening, thinking, asking, and getting into the woods. Yeah. Appreciate it. It's a beautiful time of year to get out there. I just went to Humbert Park yesterday, and it was just, I love this time of year, because it's not too hot. No bugs? Yeah, yeah. It's fantastic. The leaves are starting to change. That'll continue. We know how lucky we are there. And then I really like it when those leaves come down to talk about stick season, but between leaf fall and snowfall, it was a great time to be in the woods, because you can just see, and you can all, you know, then you realize, wow, people have been here before, like, why did they put those stone walls through the woods, and they weren't woods. And you see that history of cellar holes, and the plantings, and it all, it's just a great time to be out there, and we're up on that time. So it's always a good time to be in the woods, for sure, but I have to agree. I get excited at this time of year. It's the tree's time to shine, right, when the fall foliage, and again, that's, I think, I hope we see it as, we're proud of it, but it's this reminder, I hope that, man, we are lucky, and these trees give us an awful lot. Just last week, the poet, Sidney Lee, was reading here, and he was talking about sticksies, and how much he loves sticksies. Is that right? Same, similar things to what you were saying. Yeah, gotta be honest, I snapped a little picture out there, and I'm like, wow, I'm in the same thing with Sidney Lee. Yeah. He was talking about the same stuff. Super, thank you.