Sounds like a cliche, doesn't it, but that's exactly what we have begun today. A huge machine arrived first thing this morning to take down mature spruce on the front part of our property. The spruce are becoming dangerous, some tall oldsters already coming down one-by-one in storms, others dying, infected by the spruce beetle that is beginning to decimate particularly the mature white spruce forests in our area. We felt is was better to manage our forest, clear the trees now for a small stumpage fee, rather than clear debris and deadfalls later.
One section to be cleared I am sad to lose, though I knew it was inevitable and had asked for a couple of years life-grace when we bought the property. It is a few acres of what I call my elf and fairy forest, thick with tall old spruce that block sunlight so that a deep soft layer of moss has grown everywhere, with pools of what we call caribou moss (deer like it too), a lovely frosted grey tufted lichen that we watched caribou feast on in the Yukon, and which makes a rough bright contrast to the deep greens of the moss. It's the kind of forest that makes you sigh with pleasure when you enter it, a place where you know magic can happen. But it is dying, and it is time to clear it and make way for sunshine and new plants and trees. (I think of Hair, and the song, Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, have been humming it as the machine rumbles and whines, while trying not to sing about the devil in my heart and letting the sunshine in and facing it with a grin...)
I went through my photos and couldn't find one of my fairy forest, perhaps because it is magical and shouldn't be photographed, but I did take a picture this morning from the edge of the forest at the opening of a path Andy cut. And Andy took a picture of the amazing machine that's clearing the trees. I found a youtube video if you're interested in seeing how it works, just click on the site below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtJT_cKBppg&NR=1
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