Creme of the Crop

No letter is pronunced the way it should.

In the Eastern USA, only tiny remnants of old-growth forest remain; all the rest, over 99%, was clear-cut within the last 100-150 years.

Most tree species here have a lifespan of 300-500 years—likely longer, since extant examples of truly old trees are so rare, there is limited ability to study them. In a suburban environment, almost all of the trees you see around you are mere saplings. A 50 year old oak tree is a youth only beginning its life.

The forest where I work is 100 years old; it was clear cut around 1920. It is still so young.

When I dig into the ground there, there is a layer about an inch thick of rich, plush, moist, fragrant topsoil, packed with mycelium and light and soft as a foam mattress. Underneath that the ground becomes hard and chalky in color, with a mineral odor.

It takes 100 years to build an inch of topsoil.

That topsoil, that marvelous, rich, living substance, took 100 years to build.

I am sorry your textbooks lied to you. Do you remember pictures in diagrams of soil layers, with a six-inch topsoil layer and a few feet of subsoil above bedrock?

That's not true anymore. If you are not an "outdoorsy" person that hikes off trail in forests regularly, it is likely that you have never touched true topsoil. The soil underlying lawns is depleted, compacted garbage with hardly any life in it. It seems more similar to rocks than soil to me now.

You see, tilling the soil and repeatedly disturbing it for agriculture destroys the topsoil layer, and there is no healthy plant community to regenerate it.

The North American prairies used to hold layers of topsoil more than eight or nine feet deep. That was a huge carbon sink, taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it underground.

Then European colonists settled the prairie and tried to drive the bison to extinction as part of the plan to drive Native Americans to extinction, and plowed up that topsoil...and the results were devastating. You might recall being taught about the Dust Bowl. Disrupting that incredible topsoil layer held in place by 12-foot-tall prairie grasses and over 100 different wildflower species caused the nation to be engulfed in horrific dirt storms that turned the sky black and had people hundreds of miles away coughing up clods of mud and sweeping thick drifts of dirt out of their homes.

But plowing is fundamental to agricultural civilizations at their very origins! you might say.

Where did those early civilizations live? River valleys.

Why river valleys? They're fertile because of seasonal flooding that deposits rich silt that can then be planted in.

And where does that silt come from?

Well, a huge river is created by smaller rivers coming together, which is created by smaller creeks coming together, which have their origins in the mountains and uplands, which are no good for farming but often covered in rich, dense forests.

The forests create the rich soil that makes agriculture possible. An ancient forest is so powerful, it brings life to civilizations and communities hundreds of miles away.

You may have heard that cattle farming is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. A huge chunk of that is just the conversion of an existing forest or grassland to pasture land. Robust plant communities like forests, wetlands, and grasslands are carbon sinks, storing carbon and removing it from the atmosphere. The destruction of these environments is a direct source of carbon emissions.

All is not lost. Nature knows how to regenerate herself after devastating events; she's done so countless times before, and forests are not static places anyway. They are in a constant state of regrowth and change. Human caretakers have been able to manage ancient forests for thousands of years. It is colonialism and the ideology of profit and greed that is so destructive, not human presence.

My friend and I were talking about it today, how humans will pet anything and domesticate anything even remotely friend shaped...so what happened with bears?

I mean we tamed wolves and big cats (domesticated themselves but ya know) oxen, deer and birds, wild boar....why never did we make tiny lovable bears?

well, the shortest answer to that is that domestication isn't really something we did TO animals, it's a process that happens over time that requires work from both ends! it's a two-way-street, so to speak.

see, for domestication to really work, the domesticated species has to actually need something from humans that they then get when they enter a partnership with us.

for dogs? companionship, food, shelter, safety of the group, and assistance with child rearing and territory defense.

for cats? access to a steady food supply, shelter and safe places to rear their young, companionship.

for horses? protection, safety and shelter, healing of injuries and illnesses, and a constant sense of reassurance.

for livestock animals like cows, pigs, and goats? guaranteed safety, healing of injuries and illnesses, assurance of producing young in a safe place, and an eventual swift mostly-painless death free of the agonies of the wilder food chain.

but bears?

bears don't want anything from us. bears don't NEED anything from us. they'll eat our trash, but they're just as happy pulling salmon out of a river somewhere.

they don't have any use for human protection or shelter. they'll eat you if they think it's a valid option on the table. (pun intended)

so no, no matter how much you might like a domesticated grizzly to cuddle up to on cold nights, they're just not interested and so it will never happen.

and that's okay! there are some animals that we just don't have anything to offer to, and it's good to acknowledge that.

bears stay wildin.