Trees; or, How I Became the Villain from "Fern Gully"

 

The tree clearing actually happened before the camper, but it's taken me a while to work up to writing about it, because I feel pretty terrible about it.

The lot I purchased was heavily wooded, and I wanted to keep most of the forest intact, just clearing what was necessary. But this is a somewhat uncommon request, and it's a bit inconvenient for construction because there isn't as much space to maneuver the vehicles.

Well, my long-distance request wasn't followed very well. The logger went in with instructions to clear a particular area, and then take out a few huge old pines that would be likely to fall in a storm. Because of equipment issues (and maybe a desire to add a little more hardwood to his lumberyard load?), instead of pulling out the individual large/old pines, he clear-cut up to each pine he needed to take out and took everything in front of it. This resulted in about twice as much clearing as needed.

The day I saw it, the lot was a complete mess of torn up ground and felled giant trees. A solitary woodpecker alighted on a felled tree, looked at me, and flew away. A small piece of my soul died.

I am the villain from Fern Gully, or at least the guy who hired him.

Quick refresher on Fern Gully - guy goes into forest, gets shrunk, construction machines come to tear down forest. Guy learns lesson from fairies about importance of nature. Notable in particular for Tim Curry's performance as Hexxus, the pollution-loving villain.

Living on the site for the last few months has helped me come to terms with the damage and plan for how to restore some of the habitat I've destroyed. 

First, I had the loggers leave several piles of wood and debris around to house displaced insects and woodland creatures. As far as I can tell, these are now full of spiders and chipmunks. I also asked them to leave the stumps in place outside of the build site area. Now I can see the shoots of young maples coming up around the stumps. That was fast!

Next, I researched things I should replant. If the wood that came out of here is going to a lumberyard, it's probably going to be used for boards and housing materials and whatnot - which I guess keeps the carbon captured...But I'd like to replant trees in the spring after the cabin goes up with the intent of carbon capture, restoration of habitat, and lower the water table.

What? You're going to try to lower your water table?

Apparently some species of tree consume so much water that they can impact the water table. Given the high water table here, and now many fewer trees around to use up water, I've been looking at water-hungry types of tree to plant.

Between that and my love of maples (and maple syrup), I've decided to order a bunch of red maples for planting next year. I'd like to get a bit of a head-start by getting 6 or 8' saplings, so I can actually get some shade out of them (and hopefully some water consumption) sooner. 

There's some backing for my scheme from a few different scientific and forestry sources, and I think more of us will have to think this way to acknowledge and deal with the impact of climate change over coming years. As dry areas become drier and wet areas wetter, covered in this NY Times article, New England seems like it will be dealing with a lot more drainage, erosion, and flooding issues. I want to try to do what I can to mitigate that in my little corner.

Well there's some uplifting blog content. But at least you didn't have a woodpecker stare into your eyes and kill a piece of your soul. So there's that.