Working In The Northwest Woods: A personal history of a by Dennis Willard

By Dennis Willard

During this first-hand account of a decade spent within the outside within the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, we're taken on a trip revealing lifestyles contained in the usa woodland provider. beginning as a primary 12 months seasonal, a tender guy who has spent his existence within the Ozark Mountains of Missouri is transported to the Cascades.

Follow him as he learns his means round the rugged terrain of the massive trees state. From the private narrative of his preliminary studies to gripping money owed of encounters with wild climate, wild fireplace and natural world, the writer takes you on a voyage into the backcountry of the Northwest Woods.

examine going head to head with bears, event the striking attractiveness encountered whereas dodging lightning bolts on mountaintops and listen to what it truly is wish to be surrounded through wildfire. those are essays and tales telling of a lifestyles that's growing to be more durable and tougher to discover in our mechanized and technological global. This ebook is an awesome precis of event and humor and the natural pleasure of what it truly is prefer to stay your existence at the outdoors.

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Extra resources for Working In The Northwest Woods: A personal history of a decade spent working in the forests of the Northwest.

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These dynamics leave powerful imprints. In areas where wolves have been extirpated, for example, no new aspens are able to grow above browse height (about seven feet). Where wolves have returned, aspens are once again able to grow above the reach of hungry elk due to the ecology of fear. In such cases this creates a gap in tree ages, with lots of old aspens, no middle-aged aspens, and lots of young ones. To document the indirect effects of wolves, I have been measuring elk vigilance behavior (how much time they spend with their heads up scanning for predators versus with their heads down, eating) tree ages and stand dynamics, and songbird biodiversity.

Quickly we saw evidence that we had traveled in the right direction— wolf scats deposited tellingly every hundred feet or so as bold territorial markers. Occasionally we found enormous, dinner-plate-size grizzly scats. Above the sweet music of riverwater flowing over stones we heard the unmistakable braid of wolfen voices, and around the next bend in the trail heard something big crashing through the woods. This place was not Quantifying Wildness 11 for the fainthearted. Hooting and hollering to let the animals know we were there, we cut upslope.

For some long moments we stood speechless at being vouchsafed a glimpse of a trophic cascade in action. My friend wanted to check out the carcass, but I told him no, that it could mean disturbing the wolf and causing it to abandon its meal. Soon ravens would be homing in on the kill. Grizzly bears and cougars would arrive soon after, drawn by raven calls and the coppery scent of fresh blood. And so we left on that fine autumn morning, talking spiritedly about the eloquent demonstration of the ecology of fear the wolves had provided.

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