Thank you. I’m pleased to be here. It’s a real treat to be among so many private landowners in a state where forestry is well recognized as a major economic force. When I heard this meeting was taking place in Tupelo, I wondered if Halloween would bring out some Elvis impersonators.
A great Elvis impersonator was Sesame Street Muppet Count von Count. The Count did a convincing Elvis act counting his blue suede shoes. My grandchildren love the Muppets. Kermit the Frog is one of their favorites. Kermit has offered simple truths for over 30 years. Take, for example, these lines from “It isn’t easy being green.”
“It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over
'cause you're Not standing out
like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky”
That is our 21st century truth: it isn’t all that easy being green. The timber industry ought to be the poster child for a green world. A tree embodies the sun’s energy and uses one of nature’s most efficient processes to turn sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into useful biodegradable material.
But trees grow in a forest, and it is the forest that people see and it is the lore of the forest that makes it hard to see the green in the tree. We see the forest as a wonderful, renewable resource. Here is how people see the forest.
The forest is soaring, looming, fertile, dank, embracing, forbidding. All of that and more. The forest fascinates, lures, beckons, shelters, and smothers. It is home, nursery, graveyard, breeding and feeding ground. Often, spiritual attributes are invoked. The trees themselves are sentinels, giants, guardians and spirits.
Environmental historian Nancy Langston writes about the forests:
“Americans have a long history of splitting the natural world into two parts: civilization versus wild nature,”.
Forests are the heart of Langston’s wild nature.
Let’s look at why. The 17th century American forest was viewed by newly arrived colonists through the lens of their European folklore. The ancient myths of their homeland were passed down for generations – morality plays used to teach youngsters about the world’s dangers. Much later, these stories were collected by the brothers Grimm and we read them today as so-called “fairy tales”.
But the stories we read to our children have been sanitized and softened from their original stern message. To early settlers their folklore served up life as Europeans knew it: capricious and often cruel and the forest was key to the plot. Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel make the point: the forest is a place where danger lurks and people don’t belong.
The 18th century forest reflected this view. It was a place where you’d both literally and spiritually lose your way. It was called a dismal thicket. Stumps were dug out by hand. The forest stood in the way of settlement. Beyond the clearing lay the unknown and unknowable.
As settlements expanded across the continent, the 19th century forest softened a bit. Henry Thoreau led the way into the forest to replenish his spirit. In Nathaniel Hawthorn’s classic story “The Scarlet Letter” the forest actually plays a part. While Hester, the adulteress was walking through the forest the sun would not shine on her, but shone brightly on her daughter. A scarlet letter “A” was still sewn to her dress – worn for years to symbolize her sin. When she tears off the scarlet letter and lets her hair down the trees part letting the sun illuminate her remission. Hester’s story made sense to the 19th century reader: The forest had power over the soul.
In the 20th century the forest went on stage. Composer Sergi Prokofiev led the way. His symphonic story Peter and the Wolf uses music and imagery to contrast the light of the meadow where Peter lives from the dark of the forest where the wolf lives. Bright major chords and woodwinds represent the field. Dah, dah, dah da da dah. Three horns in a foreboding minor chord represent the forest and the wolf. Bwa, ba ba ba ba ba ba bwa.
Hollywood fell in love. Only a few years after the premier of Peter and the Wolf, Walt Disney presented the animated classic Bambi and again, the forest plays a leading role. Early in the film Bambi’s mother calls him to run and hide with her. Here is their exchange from the Disney script:
"What happened, Mother? Why did we all run?" Bambi asked in a shaky voice.
After a long pause she said quietly,
"Man... was in the forest."
Suddenly the air seemed very cold.
Story quality went downhill after Bambi. In the movie the Predator, an alien hunter stalked Arnold Schwarzenegger in the forest. In Deliverance, Burt Reynolds and his cohorts flee the forest to the tune of dueling banjos. The audience knows the set up: trial in the forest; redemption in the light.
The musician Frank Zappa was a keen observer of American culture. In his rock opera “Billy the Mountain” Zappa addresses some of the deep-seated cultural guild associated with the tug between civilization and wild nature. Billy is a mountain, and his wife Ethel, a tree growing on his shoulder. They stand near the Pacific Ocean.
They have been photographed by tourists and featured in glossy postcards for years and decide to use their postcard royalty payments to go on vacation. They make a cross-country trek from their home in California to New York. Their journey creates a path of unintentional devastation as they symbolically roll back the path of westward expansion across the United States. The message: nature will get us back, or in a paraphrase of the lyrics, don’t mess around with a mountain.
If you’re not going to mess with a mountain, you certainly are not going to cut down a tree. In recent focus groups, college educated women express extreme guilt about using paper towels. This guilt is memorialized in restroom air-blown hand driers which all proudly announce that trees will be spared if you use air instead.
Focus group members think that using disposable paper products is being wasteful – depleting resources – killing trees. I have seen advertising in the new “green washing” publications that advertises “tree-less” paper!
In the same focus group, consumers had a tough time describing renewable resources or discussing the abstract concept of renewability. Almost none could describe what it means. When they guessed, they usually described it as recycling— or using something again, but in a different way. Several offered electricity as an example of a renewable resource. Few, if any, were able to link the idea of prudent resource management with predictable future supply. Sustainability was an esoteric, abstract concept.
But they were certain that the nation’s forests were “in trouble”. When asked to think about trees and told that there were more trees growing in the U.S. today than a hundred years ago these same consumers didn’t believe it. They were skeptical and disputed the numbers. They became upset, argumentative. It can’t be true, they said, not with everything we hear in the media. When we use trees, we deplete the forest — that was their view.
Some other examples of these consumers’ guilt: Newspapers, many apologized for not using the Internet more. Paper plates, many apologized for not using reusable dishes. Paper bags, many apologized, saying maybe plastic would be better, especially if the bags were used again for other things. Too much paper is being wasted in school, they said. Their laments went on and on.
Indeed – Kermit was right - it’s not easy being green. Trees and forest products capture and store carbon. The North American forest resource is not endangered. Last year Weyerhaeuser alone planted 108 million trees. Forest biomass is a green, clean energy source. 75 percent of Weyerhaeuser’s energy needs are met through the use of wood residuals and black liquor. Research shows that building a house with wood framing uses less energy and generates less carbon dioxide than using steel or concrete. Despite these green facts, guilt about cutting down trees persists.
A tree can’t last forever, but a forest can. After all, trees are not immortal. They will rot and die. They decompose, returning nutrients – and their stored carbon – to the earth and atmosphere. But a forest can be "saved" in two ways. It can be set aside from commercial use, foregoing economic value but serving other purposes such as recreation or refuge. The public pays for this option through taxation. Yet more than half of U.S. forest land is owned privately.
There's a way to save private forest land, too. It is to ensure that the trees have economic value. If the trees have value in the marketplace, the landowner will retain the land for growing trees. So here’s the counterintuitive argument: If people do not use forest products, timberland values are diminished. If the highest and best use is not tree growing, the land will be developed for other purposes. Therefore, to save a forest we must grow, cut, use and re-grow the trees.
We in the forest products industry have much work to do to educate the public and our supply chain partners about the green value of sustainable forestry. Winnie the Pooh says it straight,
“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
So – get out there and go. Don’t assume that others understand the great value forests provide in sheltering plants and animals, filtering water, building carbon in the soil. Ask your barber what she thinks. Then tell her what you think. Do the same with your neighbor, your friends, your mother, your children, their teachers, the grocery store clerk. Tell them about wood.
Recently I went to a fund raiser for an environmental sciences program. I sat next to the Director. On reading my business card she said she thought I had great courage to show up on the campus. As far as she was concerned, we were in the business of making stumps. I gave her my pitch. She invited me to speak to her students. I will. Wood is good. Wood is green. Forests can go on growing trees forever.
Halloween is on Saturday. Let’s close with a short reading from Washington Irving’s great story “The Legend Sleepy Hollow”. The forest and a tree set the scene. Irving wrote:
Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favorite haunts of the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered.
Ichabod Crane had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air.
It is here, on the edge of the woods, where Ichabod meets his fate.
On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveler in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck, on perceiving that he was headless!—but his horror was still more increased, on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle.
We all know what happened next: a great chase. Ichabod disappeared, never heard from again. The forest did its mythical job. The tulip tree, probably a tulip poplar can grow to 150 feet with a 7 foot trunk. To the story teller, this monster symbolized the impassable gate between civilization and wild nature.
So what about forestry in a green world? How well will we do? To get the recognition we deserve – to earn the opportunities that will be forthcoming with new policy incentives we are going to have to bring a lot of new people through that gate. We dare not tear down a thousand years of mythology and culture, but we need to shine a little light through the thicket.
