Imposter Forestry
By Olivia Box
Abstract/Precis
This essay explores imposter syndrome in the woods and in the classroom. What does it mean to steward the forest, when humans have so deeply changed the course of ecological history? Time and trust are as essential to forestry as data, but I struggle to find my place in this narrative. As I walked the woods as a graduate student studying forest ecology, I looked first to textbooks and then to nature itself to find out what kind of ecologist I wanted to be, ultimately discovering that awe is a reliable teacher.
Terminology:
Shelterwood: A type of forestry cut that is intended to initiate a new stand beneath the trees that remain.
Ecological Forestry: as described by Jerry Franklin, Norman Johnson, and Debra Jognson, who are credited with the development of the field. They write, “Ecological forestry recognizes that forests are ecosystems with diverse biota, complex structure, and multiple functions, and not simply collections of trees valuable primarily for production of wood. In doing so, it seeks to maintain the fundamental capacities (integrity) of the forest ecosystems to which it is applied.”
Ecotone: Where two distinct biological communities meet and mingle. This convergence point or transition area is referred to as an ecotone.
Veneer: Fine, high quality wood. Marketable. Often, veneer wood is used to cover coarser wood in woodworking to create a finer appearance.
When a forest returns, it is ugly at best. The seedlings are overshadowed by the brambles of raspberries and the pioneer species. The soil is encrusted by the zigzags of large tires, evidence of powerful equipment to which a tree stands no chance. Even the rocks look water-deprived, covered in a dusty excuse for soil. The landscape is shaped more by logging than nature.
Imposter Forestry
A few years ago, I was standing in the middle of an 11-acre clearcut, hidden amidst the woods of Vermont. It was a small harvest, but it stretched on like an open wound. A few foresters were leading this tour, discussing the cut—how many trees they took, why, and what will grow back.
We, the forest professionals, stood democratically in a circle assuming the role of nature even if we did not quite intend to. My eyes wandered from the gesturing hands and words of the lead forester to what remained of the forest underfoot. I always look for signs across the landscape that it’s okay. I panicked knowing that it would be years and years until I could truly know if the landscape would move past this early stage—if I would even be around to bear witness to the next growth.
The lead forester pointed to a scattering of solo trees and snags across the cut, meant to seed in new growth and act as habitat for birds. We all nodded along—of course! A few trees are enough for the woodcock! I’ve never seen a single bird among these well-intentioned trees.
At the time, I was a graduate student studying forest ecology. I still do not know the technicalities of stumpage values or market trends. I have trouble memorizing tree species, ever confused by bark patterns and slight variations of color. But I feel strongly, with no statistical evidence, that these woods always offer us a place to join the landscape, even for just a split second of its infinitude.
The cut is effective. It’s mimicking natural disturbances, disturbances that the forest is both accustomed to and craves. This management references the newer tradition of ecological forestry, a modern way to cut and care for the forest, ecology first. There’s no reason for me to feel discomfort, and yet this feeling dominates my psyche and I get lost in thoughts about just how intensely humans have immersed themselves in the goings on of the woods.
It is times like these – formal tours, classes, conferences set in air-conditioned hotels—where I most fear that humans have too much control over nature. All too often, I sit towards the back of these conferences, my eyes glazing over and my mind wandering away from shelterwood cuts and conversations of shifting dynamics.
I am a scientist; I trust science. But the woods were never supposed to be this formal, this uncomfortable. I have more faith in the return of a forest, brambles and all, than in the definition of stewardship, if stewardship means “to supervise or to bear responsibility.” The deeper I move into science, the more I worry that it is getting harder to separate stewardship from control. I believe we need to return to awe, that natural gift of the wild, something that truly stands the test of time.
***
I was eager to see a true clearcut after learning about them in my silviculture class. My first view of one was just as I had imagined: post-cut, the landscape was more dead than alive. Sloped acres resembling the color of used coffee grounds sandwiched abruptly between lush forests on each side. I wanted to stick my nose to the soil to better see the odd beauty of the open acreage, to see the new seedlings bursting through the soil. A new generation that survived the burning sun and the competitive seedbank, only to try to grow upslope. I tried to imagine walking up the slope, remembering the way my calves pulled when I walk uphill, like flimsy plywood on the verge of snapping.
Clearcuts are symbolic of the history of environmental decision-making—a fast, cheap, easy way to maximize profits. After the profit is turned, the foresters, loggers, and landowners disappear. No point sticking around to watch the forest grow back—it will take too long anyway. But it is amongst the messy dirt, sawdust, and chips where awe can be found. Awe in the form of seedlings, wiry in their eagerness and bright in their color against the dirt. Like fish eggs, not all of them even survive—but they come through, nonetheless.
***
In Thoreau’s 1862 essay, Walking [1], he states: “Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand!”
If only. As Thoreau screamed this, New England had just finished a massive cutting cycle, clearing nearly every tree by mid-century [2]. Forestry has a history of playing with extremes. Despite that lesson, we moved west and cut more. Conservation has gotten better, but so has our ability to cut more wood, and faster. We’re still greedy.
A mentor of mine used to remark that the public gets up in arms every time the forest is managed. Even when it’s a small, necessary cut to prevent the spread of invasive species that would slowly kill the forest. When many hear harvest they see it as a euphemism for logging, clearcut, or domination. Sickened and uncomfortable by machines forcing trees from the ground, and yet most clearcuts these days lead to convenience: better cell service, connectivity, and ski slopes. All modern conveniences made congenial by the clearcut.
Thoreau equates walking to a vocation, writing: “No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession.” In the essay, Thoreau promotes a mindset shift. It’s not enough to simply walk or to saunter; to receive the full benefit of walking, you must be willing to surrender with open arms to the immersive experience of the outdoors. The splendor of the woods does not matter but the act of being there, amongst the trees, does. Good walkers, writes Thoreau, “were so blessed as to lose themselves for half an hour in the woods.” So much good forestry is walking and getting to know the land and listening. Trusting that the forest will make it through. Just being there for a small part, and trusting time. A clearcut, I think, isn’t always a wrongdoing; hasn’t the land seen winds so strong each tree was killed overnight?
The narrative is ever evolving. Like good fashion, forest management has gone in phases of taking and leaving. In recent years, foresters are trading traditional clear cuts for ecologically based cuts, like a strip cut, about 10 acres wide and alternating with in-tact forest parcels. In doing so, foresters can harvest from a stand over time, mimicking natural disturbance regimes.
The idea of mimicking disturbance is almost comical sometimes. Should we just let ecosystems disturb themselves? But then I remember that the humans have pushed nearly every square mile of land to the breaking point, tampering with disturbance and growth alike. It was not enough to take the wood, we co-opted the natural cycles, too.
[1] Thoreau, Henry David. Walking. 1862. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/06/walking/304674/.
[2] Harvard Forest. Landscape History of Central New England. 2021. https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/diorama-series/landscape-history-central-new-england
***
The ecological forestry movement is exciting and endearing – and young. Ecological forestry assigns value based on a long-term perspective. This movement, fueled by the years, discourse, and foresters that came before, is less than 100 years old [3]—a blink of time in forest growth.
In ecological forestry, considerable planning goes into a harvest—which tree to take or leave—to assure bird species have room to mingle, access to a stratified canopy for nesting, and places to hide from us. The marks of a healthy forest community – an oblong feeding hole in a tree, small hidden nests, fresh saplings—are the only clues of sustainability that ecological forestry so greatly hopes to achieve. There’s something both restful and eerie about knowing that a species lurks in the forest without ever seeing it, but being a part of that process, nonetheless. It is like hidden awe—not knowing the colors of the feathers, but not needing to know.
Often, no matter the shape of the cut or the type, an edge effect will always arrive. An unannounced, unseen mark of ecological communities meeting. The contrast between saplings and soil is blunt and ugly, but the edge between them results in a hidden paradise. The edge is a key element of ecological success—the highest species diversity is often found where the two communities meet and mingle, often home to the subdued hardwood dwellers like insects and common birds.
The edge of a cut and therefore the ecotone, the area where two communities converge, can be set by foresters and can move and change. A forest always returns—and as it does, the cut edge bleeds into the rest of the stand. As the forest grows, the edge can still be found if you know what to look for: new growth, fighting for light, lush amongst last year’s decay. The once stratified canopy becomes just another layer of the forest, and the birds—the very ones we cut for—move on.
At first, I saw a clearcut as the separation of human goals and the natural path of a forest, or rather, the domination of man over nature. I used to think we were justifying our sins by thinking a tree or two will save the woodcock. But the exactness of it is redeeming– choosing to set the edge depending on what trees will ultimately seed in. In New England, we shoot for yellow birch and sugar maple, but the beech often squeezes into a stand, a different mark of resiliency. The more attention I pay to where the cut meets the forest, the more I see that good management becomes intertwined with hope.
I want to be the kind of forester who cuts for the edge effect and not the veneer log, who welcomes even the raspberry underfoot. I want to say there is a clear balance to land stewardship and ecology. Cut a little, but not too much. Admit to not knowing much, but surrendering to awe anyway.
[3] D’Amato, Anthony W.; Palik, Brian J.; Franklin, Jerry F.; Foster, David R. 2017. Exploring the Origins of Ecological Forestry in North America. Journal of Forestry. 115(2): 126-127. https://doi.org/10.5849/jof.16-013.
***
In 20 years, I will be nearing 50. I hope to own a woodlot in New England, one that probably has been held by many hands. First the Indigenous people, who carried the land season by season. Then stolen by the white man. Then, me, the reconciling forester more driven by awe and the way that walking amongst a mixed hardwood stand has always felt like coming home.
I can tell you about the cuts I may employ, like small group shelterwoods because they leave enough shade for hemlocks, which will likely still be threatened by hemlock woolly adelgid if they’re even still around. I’ll leave stumps for bird habitat—hopefully by then I’ll be able to tell a nuthatch from an ovenbird when they’re mid-flight. In a couple of decades’ time, I’m confident that ecological forestry will become wonderfully unrecognizable to me. The field will have surpassed my classroom knowledge, evolving beyond the cuts and principles I once knew so well. It will have moved even closer to nature, buoyed by even better science. I have faith in this change and those who will steward it. I’ll be happy to follow along.
I don’t think I’ll ever make much money off that land. It’ll probably drive some true forester crazy to see pole-sized white pines or veneer wood. But only I will know the way it feels to walk in the woods on a cool winter morning, hearing the creaks of old pines and the rustle of icy brown leaves beneath your feet: the sound of awe.
***
I have only seen one woodcock. It danced across the night sky, mating for whom, I wondered.
I never saw its peppery-brown feathers, just the outline of its round belly and slight beak against a starry sky. I wasn’t struck by its beauty or convinced of its ecological value in the northern hardwood forest. Instead, I full-belly laughed alongside a group of naturalists. My face ached, laughing at its wild mating dance, how ridiculous it looked, stumbling through flight and attempting to be flirtatious.
The chance of me, an imposter ecologist and the woodcock meeting past dusk made my chest tighten and my smile fade. I felt buckled in awe of the fleeting moment that we had shared. Knowing it will never happen again gave me peace.
The woodcock does not supervise much, preferring to nest idly in grassy in-between, quietly turning the soil looking for insects. I think you could say it is a true steward.