The hiking club walked to the top of it this morning. You could actually see birds, mountains and sky. The wind was able to blow between the trees. Grass and flowers had room to breathe. We could walk anywhere we wanted. What a feeling of freedom that is!
In order to appreciate the calm euphoria of this experience you must contrast it with the normal state of national forests: they are hideous, gloomy, bug-infested, overgrown thickets and fire-traps. This hill had been thinned with a chainsaw.
I was starting to write about this experience, this afternoon, when a pickup pulled up to my boondocking site. A cheery fellow got out. He reminded me of Papagino, the woodsman in Ingmar Bergman's version of Mozart's "The Magic Flute."
He had the contract to thin the forest. I told him how nice the forest looked and how I wish they did more of it. Then he explained how they selected the trees. I noticed how the ground was lightly loosened up--wouldn't that make it easier to seeds of diverse kinds get started? He really seemed to appreciate that question.
He explained many things to me, like the lower fire risk and the uses of the wood such as juniper flooring, surprisingly. He was proudest of the creek running again even though the winter had been dry; with fewer trees and more grass, rain soaked into the ground like a sponge, rather than just running off in a flash.
He even offered me a job with the crew later this summer when they were working at 8000 feet!
Oddly enough I had recently purchased a classic book, The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Frazer. It is a book about mythology and early religions. If I tell you what chapter I was readying to read when the woodcutter showed up, you will think I'm making it up. It was Chapter 10, "Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe."
I was reading the abridged version of his original, wordy prose that had caused many a tree-spirit to pay the ultimate sacrifice--ten volumes or so it was. It was great fun to read about Druids and oaks, wood sprites, and the May-pole. And yesterday was May Day! Imagine what fun Sir Frazer would have had if he was alive today and could write about the thinly-disguised theology of the Greenies.
