No folks, it’s not a warning and -contrary to popular belief- I still have most of my marbles..

However, this book: Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors

Is well worth a read. Those of us who’ve taken the professional route in arb or forestry are increasingly separated from the outdoors by the neccessity of producing reports, meetings, emails and the endless phone calls and other minutiae that make up most of our days.

The point is that we don’t get to spend much time doing what enthused most of us in the first place i.e being out in the woods and breathing that ‘as yet sweet and lucid air’ as Edmund Abbey had it.

Neccessarily we often have to take those pleasures vicariously and this book gives us an opportunity to do just that.

Phillip Connors is employed for half the year as a wilderness lookout (a fire watcher essentially) in the heart of the Gila Wilderness in Southwest New Mexico. The Gila Wilderness is on a scale most of us in the UK will be lucky to experience once in a lifetime. 872 square miles with no roads, no buildings, motorised transport, construction, mining etc etc. A true wilderness.

The book is a result of over a decade of experience in the role of lookout and is at once wonderfully introspective while providing a history of a now vanishing occupation.

It also documents the history of the Gila Wilderness in part and the changing attitudes to fire as part of the ecosystem rather than an evil to be stamped out at all costs. The evolution of ecological concepts particularly in the case of Aldo Leopold makes fascinating reading. Abbey, Muir, Thoreau, Leopold etc all get in on the act somewhere in the book with Kerouac getting an honorary mention as a former lookout himself.

The book is nicely summed up by the Associated Post: ‘Reading this book is like taking a vacation in beautiful scenery with an observant and clever guide. So relax and enjoy’.

Couldn’t say it better myself.

Just returned from a thought provoking course run by the National Trust at Hatfield Forest. Tree Veteranisation (which you ATF bods will know anyway) aims to create some of the characteristics found in veteran trees on ‘boring’ younger trees or to hasten their recruitment into the ‘interesting’ (in ecological terms) category. This process attempts to create some continuity between our declining veteran and ancient tree population and those trees which are future veterans.

The course covered the use of explosives to remove limbs or tops while creating interesting fractures, and the use of various methods to mimic veteran tree features such as cavities, torn branches, woodpecker holes, deadwood etc etc.

It was interesting to see examples from both the UK and abroad (notably Spain) of what most TO’s would see as poor quality tree work or wilful damage. These techniques are producing desirable cavities, deadwood, decay etc and hastening these trees towards recruitment as future veterans. It’s certainly made me look again at some of the examples of ‘poor’ work in a different light.

Thats’ not to say that I’ll be applying a sledgehammer to Mrs Miggins’ Lime on the High street or going back to 1970s style flush cuts on our TPO trees!

However I will be looking out for the right trees/locations to bridge this important gap.

One of the most telling statistics was that of you take a population of 1000 veteran trees with an average rate of decline 1-2% then in 100 years that population will have dwindled to just 200. Think on MTOAers.

Regards

Gareth