Whether sifting through sand, or scrambling over a rocky shore, it's about finding treasures in every day. 

Second Growth; On the Bones of the Elders

When looking at stumps my intrigue is both the forms and the story. New, fresh stumps are quite boring, but given time and decay and overgrowth they become fascinating.

Tree roots drape over stumps and flow into the earth, mimicking  the curves of their ancestors. The new and the old, the variety of textures, patinas of mosses, lichens and fungi, and the very slow motion change, meet my eyes as individual and collective beauties.

The notch in a stump, where a logger inserted a springboard to stand on as he wielded his chainsaw, and a hollow log laying where it fell because it needed to be out of the way but wasn't marketable, speak of loggers who handled dangerous work; who's clothes filled with wood chips which stuck to their sweat.

The politics of logging have rattled through Southeast Alaska for many decades, at times causing major economic earthquakes. This post is not a judgement of what is right or wrong on the subject, just observations for your contemplation. It is visual history of great trees that stood for hundreds of years, people who wanted to make a decent living for their families, seedlings finding opportunity to use the nutrients of their predecessors, the trees' struggle to stabilize themselves as their initial food source wastes out from under them, and the amazing growth of trees in this temperate rainforest.

I welcome your constructive comments. Click on the images to enlarge them.

The top of this stump is eight feet across. The thick second growth is called 'dog hair.' Forests here reseed themselves quickly and thickly, and the second growth is often thinned to allow faster growth for the remaining trees.

With sticks in my hair from a day (or two) in the woods,

Alaska Beachcomber

Other foresty posts: A Short Walk in the Forest, Forest Bridges

More on logging in Alaska: Logging Mental Health Land in Southeast Alaska, Logging in  Alaska; Falling a Big Spruce