Forests and Wildfire (Logging for Healthy Habitat?)

August , 2015:

Wildfires are Back!

More than fifty homes have been burned by a wildfire near Kamiah, Idaho. More than 100 structures have been destroyed by four fires burning near Chelan, Washington. The Cabin fire in the Angeles National Forest in California has been called a “tinderbox,” destroying homes and resulting in at least one human death. Much of the state is burning up.

And once again smoke fills our valleys here in Missoula, Montana; Wildfires surround us.

I say “once again” because this has been happening periodically during summer months for, well . . . for pretty much forever. Yet people still seem surprised. Some seem upset. I recently met a tourist who had tears in her eyes as she said, “I’ve always wanted to see Glacier, and now it’s being destroyed by fire.”  (Glacier is, indeed, being degraded, but not by fire – it is being altered by thousands of gas-guzzling tourists and a fossil-fuel-driven tourist industry pumping C02 and other greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere which is warming our planet and resulting in overall less snow, earlier snow melt, melting glaciers, more drought and, ironically, drier conditions that contribute to larger and more frequent fires in places like Glacier National Park.) 

When the U.S. Forest Service was created in 1905, there were debates among early foresters on what to do about wildfires – let them burn, as  nature intended, or fight them?  Then the “Great Fires of 1910” came along, also known as the “Big Blowup,” “The Big Burn” and “The Devil’s Broom Fire.” More than 3 million acres – an area roughly the size of Connecticut – burned throughout northern Idaho and western Montana, killing 87 people and completely overrunning and destroying seven towns and severely damaging several others. From then on, the Forest Service took a militaristic approach to stopping all fires. Fire became the enemy.

More than 100 years of fire suppression contributed to altered conditions that now result in wildfires, in some places, that are more frequent and more intense than what naturally and historically occurred. But not in all places. Various forest types evolved with and adapted to various fire regimes -- varying in the frequency and intensity of fires. In some forest types, such as high-elevation lodgepole pine forests, large, less frequent, intense wildfires were and are the natural norm. There are known, predictable risks to building homes in such places, just as there are known, predictable risks to building homes in floodplains.  

It doesn’t help that the media often describes these fires as “devastating” and “catastrophic” while rarely, if ever, helping inform people about forest ecology. I doesn't help that many politicians often simplify the issue and call for more logging as a solution -- the very type of logging that contributed to more frequent and intense wild fires. Continuing the the same policies that contributed to the problem will not solve the problem no matter how much big timber interests and their lackeys will try and persuade you otherwise with half-truths, distortions and lies.   

A lot of environmentalists I know blame climate change for the fires. A lot of conservatives I know blame forest management (or what they perceive as lack of management).  Although past logging and climate change has exasperated the frequency and intensity of wildfires in many places, our western forests evolved with and are adapted to wildfire. Wildfire is as essential to these forests as air, water and soil.  Native Americans who lived close enough to the land to understand the land knew this well. Many tribes started their own fires to alter and improve habitat conditions for the deer, elk and bison that sustained them. It was when European settlers started building permanent homes and cities that fire became a huge issue. It was around 1910 perhaps a well-intentioned but misguided war on forest fires began. It's an attitude still dangerously and unfortunately entrenched in our culture. 

So what can be done? The first step should be for people to learn about the ecology and history of the forests they live in and near; support policies and management that, in some places, allows for natural and essential processes or, in other places, mimics natural processes and restores and enhances the health of these forests, and oppose misguided policies that contribute to the problem. 

More than 50 years ago, a forester, professor and writer named Aldo Leopold put it this way: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

A version of the my following article was first published 20 years ago;  it is still pertinent today:

Steve Arno

July, 1996:
Forests and Wildfires: Logging for Healthy Habitat?

Cutting trees is a sensitive, complex issue, a difficult act to defend. It can be done well or it can be done poorly. But what is good logging? Is it logging that makes a profit? Logging that creates forage for elk? Logging that looks nice to people when it's done?

To Steve Arno, good logging means working within the bounds of natural systems, emulating natural processes, maintaining all components of a healthy forest, from elk to the grasses and forbs that sustain them. And given the forestry practices of the past 100 years or more, a little good logging now may actually be necessary to restore and maintain healthy forests. This is especially so in places that evolved with frequent fires, like the ponderosa pine forest around Steve Arno's home.

Arno, a retired researcher with the Forest Service's Intermountain Fire sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana, has studied the ecology of forests and fires for more than 40 years. During that time, he's helped hone methods to restore and maintain healthy forests using logging and fire. His own land -- 60 acres in the foothills of Montana's Bitterroot Mountains -- provides a showcase for these ideas.

An open stand of ponderosa pines now towers over a forest floor covered with grass and scattered clumps of willow and Douglas fir. But Arno's land wasn't always that way. When he bought the place in 1971, it looked like some adjacent lands still do -- a thick tangle of firs and scrawny pines, with little or no grasses or shrubs poking through a dense blanket of needles and dead branches.

"This is a preservationist's Shangri-La," Arno says of the neighboring forest. "It's remained the same for years, nothing's growing. It's preserved, for a while, but in the context of thousands of years of constant change, it's pretty bizarre."

Rotting stumps of ancient ponderosas stand testament to what this forest once was a grassy savanna of giant pines, where early settlers reported riding two abreast on horseback, and where elk grazed on bunchgrasses and scattered willows. Today, it's difficult to penetrate the thicket, and tough for deer and elk to find food. Why the change? The clues lie in the stumps themselves. Turn-of-the-century high-grading -- the practice of cutting only the best, most valuable timber -- left these great skeletons to slowly decay back into the earth.

About the same time the huge pines were heading for the mills, the government began aggressively fighting wildfires. Meanwhile, settler's cattle and sheep grazed down grasses and forbs that once fueled frequent fires, ignited by lightning and Native Americans. For millennia, these fires licked through the forest in a predictable pattern still documented by thin, black scars which appear along annual growth rings in the old stumps at intervals of five to 20 years.

Like predators thinning elk herds, these fires once kept trees in check -- killing some, sparing others, recycling nutrients, rejuvenating grasses, shrubs and trees. Without fire, the trees grew dense, overcrowded, more prone to drought, insects and disease. As competition for water and nutrients increased, so did mortality. The forest grew feeble. Now few healthy pines remain. Douglas firs grow shoulder to shoulder, many dead or dying from mistletoe, bark beetles, root rot and other maladies. Forty-year-old ponderosas that should be 25 to 45 feet tall stand no higher than a person, deformed and crippled by comandra blister rust, a parasitic canker sapping life from the pines.

"These trees didn't evolve to defend themselves from this," Arno says. "Historically, fires did not allow large areas of stagnated saplings to develop. Fires thinned the saplings and did not offer a major breeding ground for the disease."

Without fire to keep stands open and reduce competition from firs, opening the forest canopy, allowing sunlight to reach the ground and replenish nutrients, pines don't have a chance.  Trees need healthy habitat. Fire is as essential as sun and rain.

"Forests are processes, not just trees and plants," Arno says. "And these forests can't survive and remain healthy without processes such as fire."

He explains it this way: "Imagine having an old grandfather clock with a glass front exposing the internal gears. You don't like the looks of one of the gears, so you remove it. Of course, you can't remove the gear and expect the clock to work, yet people expect nature to work without fire."

It hasn't. Throughout the West, fire exclusion, logging and grazing have converted open ponderosa pine forests to fir thickets. As more and more people build homes in these forests, they see the immense stumps of ponderosas that once grew there and shake their heads in wistful disbelief. But most of them intuitively reject the idea that burning and logging could actually help bring back those great pines.

When Arno looked at the monolithic old stumps on his place, he saw more than relics of a bygone era. He saw a compelling history -- and a guide to the future. Listening to the stumps, Arno began by cutting Douglas firs and sickly pines, leaving the larger, healthier pines, simulating as best he could fire's predation. In the process, he made some income, selling firewood, and pulp and saw logs to local mills. This logging and burning slash in hand-built piles reduced fuels that had accumulated during nearly a century of fire exclusion, fuels that could feed fires far larger and more intense than the frequent surface fires that once occurred, the kind of conflagrations that can damage soils, vegetation and wildlife. Then he brought back fire, torching low clumps of dead willows and stagnant aspen.  Arno's land is now green with pinegrass, bunchgrass, willows, snowbrush and aspen suckers. And elk and deer frequent his land once more.

This is the kind of logging Arno would like to see done throughout the lower-elevation pine forests on private and public lands. "Restoration logging," he calls it.

"Forests are constantly changing, dependent on periodic disturbances," Arno says. "We can mimic those disturbances with carefully designed harvesting and prescribed fire -- not recreating the original forests, but learning from nature, using nature as a guide, maintaining components and processes which these forests evolved with and depend on."

When many people think of logging, they envision denuded mountainsides webbed with roads. And they know some logging operations are still managed for short-term profit, not as part of a long-term process to restore and maintain the health and sustainability of the land. Bad logging inflames cynicism and mistrust. Many people now protest cutting trees, anywhere, anytime, no matter the reason. Passion and lack of understanding often fuel these debates. Not all logging is bad.

Good forestry and wildlife management rest on this fundamental premise: A surplus can be sustainably used by people. And we Americans do use wood products. Lots of them. The typical U.S. citizen consumes wood and paper products equivalent to what can be produced from one 100-foot tree every year. This figure includes 663 pounds of paper per person each year, as well as wood fiber in forms as diverse as insulation, rayon, oils, paints and fuels. Small trees are mulched and glued into particle board, wafer board, laminated lumber . . . the list goes on.

"We are still hunter-gatherers, we still need to make a living from the land," Arno says. "We can do so and still maintain wildlife and aesthetics."

Arno believes that the United States should rely on homegrown trees to meet its needs rather than importing timber. While U.S. timber companies export 3.3 billion board feet of timber each year, the U.S. imported 17 billion board feet of processed lumber and raw logs last year. Nearly half of all wood products consumed in the United States today come from other countries -- mostly Canada -- and such places don't necessarily practice enlightened forestry. Amo's vision of "light-on-the-land" logging -- restoring and maintaining healthy forests, employing local people -- contrasts sharply with this condition.

"We don't need to rob from other societies to support our consumption," he says, "We can, and need to, manage our own forests to improve forest health and reduce the risk of severe wildfires."

Logging for healthy forests strikes many people as an oxymoron. Others cautiously embrace it. But some loggers, foresters and timber companies have jumped aboard a "forest health" bandwagon, claiming logging can reduce fire danger and improve forests just about everywhere and anywhere, distorting science to boost unsustainable greed-based profit.

In the name of a "forest health emergency," the U.S. Congress enacted legislation in 1996 that expedited timber salvage on federal lands by exempting salvage sales from administrative appeals, limiting the time available for judicial review, and easing environmental planning procedures. The legislation was attached as an amendment to a rescission bill and became known as the “Salvage Rider.” Despite broad public criticism, several national forests invoked the salvage bill to build new roads and cut dead trees -- and live trees, too, if foresters deemed them “unhealthy.” Even trees blown down by strong winds were quickly salvaged. But dead and decaying trees are as much a part of healthy forests as fire, wind and rain. Simply removing them ignores the complexities of forest health and further alienates people, provoking controversy instead of consensus. Efforts to get people into the woods and show them sites that demonstrate good forestry are far more likely to regain public trust.

Forest health problems do, indeed, exist, with serious implications. From the Cascade Mountains of Oregon to the Front Range of Colorado, land from British Columbia to Arizona, fire exclusion, logging, grazing and human development have transformed millions of acres of ponderosa pine savannas. In fact, Wallace Covington, an ecologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, calls ponderosa pine savannas the most endangered forests in the West.

Covington studies ponderosa pine forests in Arizona, comparing current conditions to pre-settlement times. On the Coconino National Forest, where pine and bunchgrass coexisted with fire for two to five million years, there were once about two dozen trees per acre -- a wide open pine stand with a grassy understory. Today, roughly 850 trees choke each acre. Where 1,000 pounds of grasses and forbs once flourished in each acre of land-sustaining great herds of deer and elk, only about 350 pounds per acre now grow. As the profusion of trees compete for moisture, nutrients, sun and space, they become increasingly stressed. Burning won't solve the problems, Covington says. In the absence of fire, a thick, sterile carpet of duff has crept up the bases of trees. A fire now would not be like the periodic, low-intensity ground fires that once thinned forests. It would be a large, intense fire, reaching high into the crowns and deep into the soils, killing mature pines along with the crowded understory.

That's precisely what happened in a former pine savanna much farther north. On August 19, 1992, a dozen lightning strikes in the foothills east of Boise, Idaho, sparked a blaze that burned 257,000 acres of forests and rangelands, including large pines. The fire scorched one stream to bedrock, wiping out a population of increasingly rare bull trout. Efforts to protect homes cost more than $24 million. One area, however, didn't burn. When it reached Tiger Creek, the blaze lay low and merely burned off the underbrush in a 2,500-acre stand of ponderosa pines -- the only survivors within miles. The Tiger stand had previously been logged to remove the understory of fir and reduce fuels, and prescribed fire had been used to restore and rejuvenate grasses.

Like the pine savannas, great stands of aspens grew in what is now Arizona and New Mexico. But in the past century, more than half the aspen forests that existed in pre-settlement times have disappeared. Now, efforts to log tangles of pinon, juniper and fir -- combined with prescribed fire -- are helping restore the aspens that are synonymous with elk country in the Southwest. And in the moist Sitka spruce and hemlock forests along the West Coast, when conditions were just right every few hundred years, intense fires created expansive openings of grasses and forbs, providing forage for deer and elk. Here, too, logging and fire may be essential to maintain healthy elk habitat.

But few logging operations occur without heated debate these days. If nothing else, forest health issues may serve as a catalyst to bring people together.

"There hasn't been much effort in the past to explain forestry practices," said Seth Diamond (a friend of mine who was a wildlife program director for the Intermountain Forest Industry Association before his tragic death in a plane crash in 1996.) "The public has evolved from not being involved, to reacting and criticizing, to where they are now getting out in the woods, learning about forestry and sharing their ideas and concerns. Unfortunately, logging has polarized and alienated a lot of people--but we need those people to help us find solutions to complicated problems. People need to be aware of the consequences and tradeoffs of different options. Yes, there were large fires historically, but is that acceptable today in all places? And if not, what do we want to do? These ecosystems evolved with disturbances like fire, and logging can create similar circumstances."

While logging can reduce fuels and allow managers to safely restore fire, Arno is quick to point out that logging alone cannot replicate fire. Tom Atzet, a Forest Service ecologist for southwestern Oregon forests, agrees.

"Some people say logging is a wholesale substitute for fire," Atzet says. "It isn't. We don't yet understand all of the physical and chemical properties of fire, or the effects fire has on organisms within the environment. Logging can help in some places, by reducing fuels, but as far as nutrient cycling, fire certainly does things that logging doesn't."

Biologists have demonstrated over and over the critical link between fire and countless species of birds, mammals and insects. Even some lichens, which cling to trees and rocks and take their sustenance from air and rain -- coincidentally serving as key indicators of air quality -- may require fire to survive. Atzet says recent research suggests lichens may inhale nutrients from wildfire smoke. In the big picture, we still know very little about the millions of intricate relationships between fire and forest organisms, but we do understand this much: fire is essential to healthy forests.

For many, though, fire conjures images of charred homes and Bambi fleeing a wall of flames. Some people aren't willing to accept the risk of prescribed fire, or simply don't want to choke on smoke lingering in valleys. Just as many don't want logging occurring near their homes. But there is risk in doing nothing as well.

"It's like holding your hand over a dripping hose," Atzet says. "For a while, you can keep the water from coming out. But the pressure builds and builds. Eventually, the water bursts out with far more power and intensity than if you just let it, drip. We've held it back for awhile, but now fuel loads are high, and forests are ready to explode."

Unfortunately, land managers tend to meet the most resistance to logging and burning where people are building homes. This also happens to be where ponderosa pine forests are most in need of thinning and burning, where elk and deer spend harsh winters and require grasses and forbs that can only be restored and sustained by burning and logging, and where elk and deer have already lost millions of tons of forage to human sprawl. Only by working together will people solve such dilemmas.

Atzet has a disabled son, who has been in and out of hospitals for years. At times, Atzet grows frustrated with doctors who leave him to fidget in waiting rooms, uninformed.

"They have my son's best interest at heart, but treat me like an outsider," he says. "Yet I have more interest in my son than anyone else in the world. It can be that way with forestry. People have a deep interest in forests, and land managers can be like doctors."

On one occasion when Atzet took his son in for a spinal tap, doctors parted the heavy curtain of professional medicine and allowed him to join them in the operating room to watch and help.

"We were working together toward the same goal," he says. "It can work the same in forest management, by letting people who care join in the process, to watch and help.

"It's not the science. We're not lacking the science to do a good job in managing ecosystems. It's the human element--getting people to work together toward common goals."

July, 1996:
What's Good For The Goose May Kill The Gander

 

The great pitfall of "forest health" lies in people's tendency to overgeneralize. What works in one forest may prove disastrous elsewhere. For example, high-elevation forests like lodgepole pine evolved with less frequent, more intense wildfires. These burns created a patch of grass here, a small stand of young lodgepole there, and some dense old-growth nearby to form a classic mosaic, supporting everything from elk and deer to pine martens and owls. But years of fire exclusion and logging have allowed lodgepoles to grow into larger, more uniform stands with little diversity. Pine beetle epidemics and large wildfires are on the rise.

But thinning and burning the understory would be absurd here. Scattered clearcuts and more intense prescribed burns would more closely follow historic natural patterns of fire. In the high country of Idaho's Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, for instance, large hot fires occasionally burn dry, south-facing slopes creating huge brushfields, while sparing the spruce and fir on moist north slopes. Viewed from above, the patchwork of trees and openings is difficult to distinguish from clearcuts in adjacent logged areasexcept for the roads.

Foresters prescribe distinct treatments to different forests. Clearcutting ponderosas can be like amputating the leg of a heart attack victim. So can thinning lodgepole. But when economic and social pressures transcend genuine forest health considerations, land managers may prescribe the wrong treatment in the wrong place. That's why clearcuts have a bad name, and why folks think selective cuts are always best. Clearcuts assault people's senses, while a selectively thinned forest seldom draws attention. But aesthetics don't always equate to good forestry. Selective logging has become synonymous with good forestry, yet if only large, valuable trees are selectively cut, it's nothing more than high-grading.

Of course, logging plans must account for social and economic factors. Modern technology allows for logging that's lighter on the land than past practices, but not without tradeoffs. Helicopter logging can eliminate the need for roads in some areas, but to make a profit, loggers may have to cut bigger, more valuable trees, like mature ponderosa pines and larches -- often the very fire-adapted, fire-dependant species foresters are trying to restore. More traditional equipment like grapple skidders and feller bunchers costs less, but requires roads and skid trails.

Some state-of-the-art machinery, like harvesters and forwarders (that together form a "cut-to-length system" that cuts, limbs and loads trees on the spot) can range far from roads, reducing the number of roads required. Equipped with wide, rubber tires, the machines cause less erosion and soil compression than traditional equipment, and they can process small-diameter fir thickets that may be impractical to log otherwise. But together they cost about $700,000.

Every technique has benefits, each has faults. Much depends on the types of trees to be cut, when they are cut, the nature of the terrain where they grow, the going price of lumber and pulp, and whether the trees are on public or private land. Logging on private lands tends to have a more singular focus. Expensive, time-consuming thinnings and prescribed burns don't boost the bottom line of timber company ledgers. And timber companies are in business to make money. If they don't, a lot of their forests could be (and have been) sold and used for other profit-making ventures -- like subdivisions and resorts.

In contrast, agencies charged with stewardship of public lands may view logging to restore and maintain healthy forests as essential, even if they have to do it without making a profit. Like prescribed fire, logging can be an important way to restore natural vigor to a forest.

A Hooded Punk Kid Marine Wolf-Loving Hunter

PART OF A FACEBOOK CONVERSATION I RECENTLY HAD WITH A HUNTER AND FISHERMAN FROM IDAHO FALLS:

• Ron Todd Summers: David, you rely on the studies of others whom have tainted your mind. Your still wet behind the ears and have a long ways to go before your opinion counts.

• David Stalling: Ron, I am 54 years old and have hunted, fished and roamed the wilds most of my life. I served in a Marine Corps Force Recon Unit; I earned degrees in forestry and journalism; I have worked for the U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, National Wildlife Federation and Trout Unlimited, and served two terms as the president of the Montana Wildlife Federation . . . I've also killed 26 elk, most with a bow. And I fish. I've spent most of a lifetime around and observing elk, wolves, grizzlies and other wildlife. How long do the back of ears stay wet? Please tell me, what else do I need to do, and how much longer do I have to go, to become as wise as you old guru?

• Ron Todd Summers: David, first off let me say, I am sorry for saying you are wet behind the ears. Your profile picture should be changed and its misleading. If the wolves didnt play an important part in thining out the herd in yellowstone, then in 1995 when they were introduced was a big lie.

• David Stalling: Ron, Of course the wolves played a role in thinning out the elk herds. And that's a good thing. Elk herds are back within their historical range of variability -- at healthy, sustainable levels -- the habitat and other wildlife are better off for it. Why should my profile pic be changed and how is it misleading? It's me. It was taken recently in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness.

• Ron Todd Summers: You look like a 16 year old. I am surprised a hunter would support the reintroduction of wolves that are killing all our elk.

• David Stalling: Well, thanks . . . I think. I guess the wilds keep me healthy. I am kind of surprised a fly fisherman would be opposed to the reintroduction of a species that has helped restore healthy landscapes, including the critical riparian areas that help maintain healthy rivers and streams that sustain healthy trout populations.

• Ron Todd Summers: Your picture profile still makes you look like a kid. So now your saying wolves help fish?

• David Stalling: Thanks Ron. As I said, the backcountry keeps me healthy. You seemed a bit overly interested in my looks. A kid? You might consider getting new glasses. But yes, an overabundance of elk hammered the riparian communities in the Yellowstone area -- riparian areas are critical in maintaining the healthy, functioning river systems that sustain the fish you catch -- and the return of wolves has helped knock elk back to healthy, sustainable levels. As a result, the riparian areas have improved, as has the health of the rivers and streams that sustain the fish you like to catch. It's all connected -- there's lots of cogs to a wheel, and they all play a role. That is how healthy, functioning ecosystems work.

• Ron Todd Summers: No not interested in your looks. I am straight. You said you are 54 yoa, I simply pointed out that in the picture you look like a hooded punk kid. See and that explains a lot about you being confused. Fisherman have not caused the decline in elk and the wolves have not increased the cutthroat population. Do you know how messed up that sounds? I dont care what facts or studies you are basing this on, you will probably say next that the moon is responsible for the populations.

• David Stalling: A hooded punk 54-year old former Force Recon Marine kid wearing a backpack and mountain parka in the middle of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness in the winter? Can you see okay? And how does that explain a lot about me being "confused?" You need to read up a bit on ecosystems and understand how they function. Learn about the wild places you claim to spend time in and understand.

• Ron Todd Summers: A hooded punk kid playing in the snow doesn't make you a marine in the bitterroot, and an expert on ecosystems. Still not interested and very straight.

 • David Stalling: Check out my latest album, available at most punk rock record stores:

Frozen Solitude: A Winter Trek through the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness

Perhaps the best, and certainly the easiest part of my brutally cold winter trek through the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness took place on a scorching hot July day. I was on a four-day backpack trip to rescue my skis, which I had cached in the wilds the previous December. On the way out I met a river guide leading clients from Georgia down the Selway River. 

"Are those skis you have strapped to your pack?" he asked. I smiled and nodded. 

"You've either been out here a long time, or you're crazy," he said. 

"Both," I replied.

So I told him about my winter excursion, a 14-day, 125-mile trek through the remote 1.4-million acre wilderness in south central Montana and central Idaho. It's a story of wicked-cold temperatures, blizzards, avalanches, icy creek crossings, cliff jumps and a mortally wounded moose. The guide offered dinner in exchange for entertaining his clients with my adventure. We settled around the campfire and my story unraveled like a tall tale. Wearing only a T-shirt, shorts and Tevas, swatting mosquitoes on a warm summer evening, I struggled to convey just how brutally different the land becomes during the short, dark days of winter.

"It was day three of my winter journey," I began, "and all had gone as planned . . ." 

I had already skied up Lost Horse Creek to Bear Creek Pass, and enjoyed the long, gradual downhill trek along Bear Creek to the Selway River. Thus far skies were blue, temperatures crisp but comfortable, and the snow (as deep as 20 feet in places) was packed and easy to ski. Even getting out of my sleeping bag in the morning wasn't so bad. At this rate, I thought, I might just get through the wilderness and reach Elk City, Idaho in eight days instead of ten as I had planned. But by the time I reached the Selway River, clouds had rolled in, snow was falling hard, and the river had a cold, grey menacing look. Ice was clinging to the banks, snow was piled deep on the islands and boulders, and  emerald water was slowly carrying mini-icebergs north towards the Lochsa and Clearwater. The 40 or so yards across is an easy swim in sum­mer, but deadly in winter. I found a good fording spot, where the river was waist-deep, and built a large fire as a backup in case things went awry. I stripped off my clothes and, car­rying my pack high above my head, I tried to wade across. My feet grew so numb I could not feel the bottom as I tried to pick my way across the rocky riverbed. I'll never know if I stepped on loose rock or slippery algae, but my feet came out from under me and I fell into an icy bath. I barely made it to my fire, still hot enough to warm me. Once dry, I dressed, dried out the wet gear, cooked up some hot chocolate, ate, repacked, stripped and tried again. This time I wore wool socks and long johns and had better luck. I reached the west side numb, cold and humbled, and quickly changed into dry thermals, wool pants and jacket, windbreaker, boots, hats, gloves and wrapped my sleeping bag around me for added warmth. I remember feeling smug as my body temperature adjusted, thinking I had just completed the most difficult part of the trip. 

I was wrong.

As with human relations, my infatuation with the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness has grown stronger through adversity; you have to see the harsh side of people and places before you truly know them and can truly love them. The Selway drew me in when I moved to Montana in 1985, straight out of the Marine Corps, and began exploring the more remote parts of the country.  In those days, I worked four 10-hour days for the Forest Service, using all my three­-day weekends, vacations, sick days and occasional days of playing hooky to develop an intimate relationship with the place. I backpacked throughout the mountains in summer; fished and swam in most of the lakes; hunted elk and picked huckleber­ries in the fall, and searched for dropped antlers in the spring. I scaled the jagged, granite walls; crawled through the steep jungles of alder and menziesii; slipped, cussed and climbed my way through spruce bottoms tangled in blowdown; basked in glorious fall days in high mountain meadows graced by golden larch and the pungent odor of alpine fir; nearly drowned in one of the creeks and survived a punish­ing fall off a cliff. I've seen the mountain goats, elk, moose, wolverines, black bear, mountain lions, wolves and other wild critters that inhabit the place, all on my spring, summer and fall trips.

Winter, of course, is different.

Like flood and fire, winter brings death to the high country but plays a vital role in keeping the whole healthy; in its wake comes rejuvena­tion and life. l wanted to see the Selway in its harshest mood, when this brilliant, vibrant landscape falls into a deep, long silent sleep.

My first attempt failed. My friend Jim and I skied part way down Bear Creek on a clear January afternoon and camped under massive cedars. We awoke the next morning to a startling rumble that sounded like thunder. We dressed and climbed out of the tent to investigate. We watched in awe as a massive wall of snow let loose from a ridge maybe half a mile away, knocking out trees in its path and launching car-sized boulders as if they were pebbles. There are few things I fear as much as avalanches. While a Marine, on ski patrol in northern Norway, some comrades had been buried and had come close to death. Once, in the Bitterroot Mountains, an avalanche slammed me into trees and buried me up to my waist. I've had recurring nightmares of riding down a steep slope atop an avalanche and slowly sinking into blackness beneath a white tomb.

So Jim and I abandoned the trip that day and backtracked our way out.

We tried again the next year, in February, but ran into wet, sticky snow too difficult to ski on, and so retreated once again. On my third, successful attempt I went alone, during my Christmas break, as Jim traveled to warmer climes for vacation.

Crossing a clearing the day after my frigid river swim, I felt the snow beneath my skis move slightly, carrying me downhill. When it stopped, I cautiously backed out to a safer place in the trees. I dug a snow pit, examined the various layers and observed how the top, wet, heavier portion could easily slide on a lower frozen layer. In other words, avalanche danger was high. Retracing my path back down to the Selway River, I headed south, then west up a different drainage. Eventually I found a safer route, but the detour added an extra day to my trip. And then a blizzard moved in.

I spent two days in my tent, reading, writing in my jour­nal, and feeling lonely, vulnerable and restless. There were times I thought the wind would pick up the tent, with me in it, and carry me away. I kept knocking snow off the tent so it wouldn't collapse under the weight. The few times I ventured out in the brutal wind to relieve myself, I did not let go of my temporary home for fear of losing it in the whiteout condi­tions. When the storm subsided, only the top two feet of the tent showed above the snow. I had to dig my way out.

Skies cleared to blue, temperatures plummeted, and I packed up and moved on. That evening, as I sought a place to spend the night, my ski binding broke. I had just passed the halfway point where it was as easy to push on to Elk City, Idaho, as it was to turn back, and I was seven days into what I'd optimistically expected to be a ten-day trip. With skis rendered useless, I strapped on a pair of snowshoes I'd brought along for emer­gencies. As grey clouds rolled in, bringing another storm, I tied my skis to a distinguishable alpine fir on a prominent ridge where I knew I could find them come summer. Then I moved on as quickly as I could on snowshoes. The going would be much slower than skiing, and I had only enough rations for three more days. Toward dusk, another obstacle stopped me -- a series of sheer cliffs. Not wanting to risk adding another day by turn­ing back, I took my chances. Finding a section of cliff that looked to be only 20-feet high, I threw my pack down and watched it disappear in soft, powdery snow. Then I jumped. My body jabbed through the snow like a knife, stopping chest deep. Relieved that I had hit no rocks or trees, I laughed out loud with adrenaline-induced exhilaration. I had overcome fear, pushed limits and survived to tell about it.

After brushing off snow and digging out my pack, I noticed a scrawny old whitebark pine, covered in hoar frost with weathered, twisted branches reaching in all directions. The tree seemed the only living thing around. I felt a strong bond with this monarch, admiring it for its tenacious ability to cling to life in such a harsh place. I took a photo of that tree, so cold and alone in a barren land scape, and dubbed it Frozen Solitude. That old stone pine signaled a turning point. The rest of the trip was tolerably cold, and the hard-packed snow allowed snow­shoeing to go more quickly than anticipated. Bright stars and a fat moon lit up clear, brilliant nights that offered spectacular shows of aurora borealis. Up Wylies Ridge towards Square Rock, on past Black Mountain, Elk Summit and Running Lake, then down toward Meadow Creek, I covered many miles, legs often exhausted from lifting the extra weight of snow that often accumulates on top of snowshoes.

Near the end of my trek, I noticed fresh moose tracks down along a spruce bottom and followed them. Soon I saw blood, large red splotches brilliantly contrasting an otherwise white and grey world. Like ink on paper, the tracks revealed a story. I found the place where a mountain lion had leapt from behind a boulder, and could see where predator and prey rolled and struggled for a good 50 yards. Then the lion tracks went a separate direction. I continued on the blood trail, and came upon the moose, a large cow, lying in a creek. When she saw me, she tried to stand up, but fell back down into the cold, running water. Her left side was torn and bloody from tooth and claw. There was nothing I could do for her, not even sure it would be right if I could. Feeling sad, and intrusive, I moved on, contemplating my contradictory feelings of sorrow and elation. Seemingly brutal and unusual to us modern day people, such events occur every day in the wilds, in the real world, a world of life and death, decay and renewal. To be buried by avalanche, drowned in a river, frozen to death in a blizzard . . . such an end would be mourned by friends and family at home. But out there, out in the wilds, I would simply fertilize the sedges and forbs eaten by elk come spring. Wilderness, the last wonderful wild vestiges of the real world, can bring us closer to our roots.

By the time I approached Elk City, I had been without food for three days. I felt weak and exhausted, but even then, when I heard the obnoxious whining of a snowmobile in the dis­tance, I longed to return to the silence of winter wilderness. When I reached town, friends threw a party for me, but after so many days alone it was overwhelming to be around people. I had difficulty keeping food down at first; the greasy pizza and cheeseburgers were a shock to my stomach after the lean days of trekking.

The next summer, I returned for my skis, coming in from the Paradise area, which is only accessi­ble by car in the summer. After a wonderful evening with the river guide and his southern clients, I walked back to my tent, crawled into my sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep thinking about snow and cold and ice and bliz­zards. I could hear the Selway River nearby, trickling water born from high mountain snowmelt flowing across the land, cascading over ledges and meandering through lush, green meadows, bringing life to this wild place; nourishment, suste­nance and life all derived from the harsh deadness of winter. I fell asleep, feeling warm, safe and content.

But that night, I dreamed of avalanches.


Note: This piece originally appeared in the 2005 Winter Issue of the Big Sky Journal, and received 2nd place in the Outdoor Writers Association of America's Excellence in Craft Contest, Nature Writing Category.

Into The Bear's Den

Freezing, drizzling rain when we started off at the trailhead, followed by a challenging crossing of a turbulent, spring-swelled creek and a steep, rugged climb to the high country where snow remained deep and avalanche danger extreme. Early May – the worst possible time to head into the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, but the best time to search for grizzly hair.

A few days earlier, taking a much more leisurely approach by plane, two aerial observers spotted fresh bear tracks high in the backcountry and traced them back to the very place where the bear had popped out of the snow, a furry eruption from a long winter’s nap. It’s just what they were looking for; since grizzlies tend to den higher than black bears, and this den sat at about 7,000 feet, it just could be a grizzly’s. They plotted the spot on a map and took a few photos to assist efforts to locate the den from the ground – if they could find anyone foolhardy enough to cross a raging creek and risk avalanche danger. That’s where Larry Campbell and I came in. Our mission was straightforward enough: hike, swim and snowshoe to the bear’s den, dig it up, find some hair and bring it back. It took five days.

The trip was part of the Great Grizzly Search, a collaborative effort by eight conservation and scientific groups to try and document the presence of grizzlies within the 1.4 million acre Selway Bitterroot Wilderness and surrounding country in southwest Montana and central Idaho, an immense 26,073-square-mile chunk of wildlands that hold the largest contiguous wilderness in the lower 48 states. It once took me 14 days to cross some of this country on snowshoes and skis, a 125-mile solo midwinter trek from Lost Horse Creek near Darby, Montana, to Elk City, Idaho. I’ve backpacked through these mountains in the summer, fished and swam in most of the lakes, hunted elk and picked huckleberries in the fall and searched for dropped antlers in the spring. I’ve scaled its jagged, granite walls; crawled through its steep jungles of alder and menziesii; slipped, cussed and climbed my way across spruce bottoms tangled in blowdown; basked in glorious fall days in high mountain meadows graced by golden larch and the pungent odor of alpine fir; nearly drowned in its creeks and survived a close call with avalanche. I’ve seen elk, moose, wolverines, black bear, mountain lions and wolves, but never grizzly bears in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness. This doesn’t mean they’re not there.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doesn’t think so. That’s why, in 1999, the agency approved a plan to “reintroduce” 25 grizzlies to the area as an “experimental, nonessential” population, which means they would not be fully protected under the Endangered Species Act as they are elsewhere where the bears are known to exist. The novel concept was a compromise crafted by an unusual coalition including the National Wildlife Federation, Defenders of Wildlife and the Idaho forest products industry. Other groups, including the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Great Bear Foundation, Friends of the Bitterroot (of which Larry Campbell is a member), Friends of the Clearwater, Wilderness Watch, Sierra Club and the Craighead Wildlife/Wildlands Institute did not support the plan. They believe grizzlies already inhabit this country and deserve full protection under the Endangered Species Act. Thus was born the Great Grizzly Search, to prove they’re already there. These groups endorse a more viable option of protecting habitat, letting bears roam in on their own, and perhaps “augmenting” existing populations by bringing in a few more. A sound plan, to be sure, but unlikely to receive political backing in a region where “No Grizzlies” stickers adorn many a pickup truck. “It’s just one more thing we don’t need here,” said one local resident at a public meeting. “We’re already fighting the economy, development, environmentalists and terrorists.” The governors of Idaho and Montana spoke against it, as did Congressional leaders. “They are schizophrenic, manic-depressive animals,” said Representative Helen Chenoweth. “I don’t want them at all in Idaho.”

Good populations of grizzlies roam Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat and Great Bear  Wilderness areas, and other parts of northern Montana. There are also grizzlies in the Seeley, Swan and Blackfoot Valleys, and in the Yaak – a place less wild than the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness. There’s also a sizeable group in and around Yellowstone. But there’s no connection between the northern and southern populations, something wildlife biologists say is necessary to ensure genetic viability and long-term health of grizzlies. In its 1993 Grizzly Recovery Plan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service emphasized the importance of restoring viable populations within the Selway Bitterroot area, providing a vital link where say a boar from the north might conceivably impregnate a sow from the south. This may have already happened. 

Officially, the last “verified” grizzly in the area was 1946. Unofficially, reports trickle in, including a 1980 sighting by and Idaho Fish and Game officer. In 1998, a Forest Service packer saw a bear with a “prominent hump . . . and a dish-faced profile.” Another Forest Service official found a large track in the same area believed to be a grizzly’s. A Forest Service biologist called both men “experienced woodsmen” and “objective observers” and concluded: “I feel that the sightings are in all likelihood those of a grizzly bear.” But not enough verification, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, so the agency persisted with the “experimental, non-essential” plan. No matter. Soon after taking office in 2000, Secretary of Interior Gale Norton put a halt to the grizzly restoration plan, experimental or not.

All the more reason to prove their existence; if the great bear still roams these mountains, the law mandates protection and restoration.

Which is why, in early May of 2001, Larry and I swam a frigid, violent creek and snowshoed our way up into the wilds. Not to say we were miserable. We spent the first night along a natural hot spring, popular enough in the summer that, as I poked around under boulders in search of dry kindling, I serendipitously discovered an old stashed bottle of cheap wine. We drank it, of course, while soaking in hot water and sharing tales of, what else?, close encounters with grizzlies.

If not fear, there is certainly apprehension when looking into the eyes of a wild grizzly from just a few feet away – even if the bear is sedated and confined to a 6-foot, cylindrical metal cage. Which is how I met my first wild grizzly many years ago while visiting with a wildlife biologist in Alberta. The bruin had raided a rancher’s grain so was captured to be moved back deeper into the wilds. Grizzlies evoke strong emotions; fear and awe to name just two. Smelling the musky stench of this burly boar, seeing his mass of bone, muscle, claw and thick, brown hair -- knowing that this animal under the right circumstances might tear of my limbs and consume me -- I also felt sorrow to see him humbled in a cage with a radio-collar around his neck. Subdued as he was, he seemed, well, merely like a bear; hardly the mythical beast we humans tend to either vilify or glorify.  

Digging deep into the bear's den

“Bears are made of the same natural dust as we, and breath the same winds and drink of the same waters,” naturalist John Muir wrote. “A bear’s days are warmed by the same sun; his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours.” Certainly they warrant cautious respect, but mostly what they need from us is tolerance. 

I met a man who has lived in the backwoods of Alberta all of his 69 years, outfitting, logging, mining, trucking and whatever else he could do to get by. When our conversation wound around to grizzlies, he told of a coyote that chased a grizzly up a power pole. Zapped by the power lines, the bear came out of the sky like a runaway grand piano. Both were found dead, he says, the charred bruin on top of the flattened coyote. Not surprisingly, the man didn’t wrap grizzlies in a shroud of mystique. In Alberta, the bears aren’t endangered. “We have a good population here, and they don’t seem to bother anyone, although we do have an occasional incident,” he says. “In 1940, 1941, I saw grizzlies all around me when I was trapping with my Dad. I’ve been around them ever since. You either get used to them or your hair stands up all your life.”

My hair certainly stood up when, while hunting mule deer along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front several years ago a grizzly emerged from a copse of Doug fir just 40 yards to my front, walking right towards me. Before I could even decide how to react, he stood on his hind legs, sniffed the air, dropped to all fours and ran the other way. Another time at dusk in a dense, dark forest of spruce I stumbled onto a grizzly’s cache – a dead deer buried under dirt and spruce bows – and had a terrifying, primordial feeling that a bruin was close by, irritated perhaps, staring me down. I looked around and could barely see him in the shadows, perhaps 50 yards or so away, looking at me. I cautiously and humbly walked away, wondering if each breath would be my last. Another time, in the Badger Two Medicine area, I surprised a sow and her cubs and she bluff charged, full speed, to within perhaps 10 yards of me. It was a stern, dead-serious warning; I thought it was the end of my life.

Yet I never felt so alive.

In his book, “The Great Bear,” John Murray describes it perfectly: “Those who have packed far up into grizzly country know that the presence of even on grizzly on the land elevates the mountains, deepens the canyons, chills the winds, brightens the stars, darkens the forest, and quickens the pulse of all who enter it.”

Not to suggest they’re harmless. A few years ago in September, a bowhunter was gutting an elk in Montana’s Blackfoot Valley when he was mauled and killed by a grizzly. Such stories, though infrequent, often haunt me. Statistically, I know I’m more apt to fall off a cliff, drown, get struck by lightning or have a heart attack than fall pretty to a grizzly. But statistics don’t calm nerves when you stumble upon a steaming pile of bear scat. Invigorating, indeed, and a vital ingredient to wildness. “When all the dangerous cliffs are fenced off, all the trees that might fall on people are cut down, all the insects that bite have been poisoned, and all of the grizzlies are dead because they are occasionally dangerous, the wilderness will not be made safe,” says Canadian naturalist Yorke Edwards, “Rather, the safety will have destroyed the wilderness.”

All of which was going through my mind as Larry and I dug deeper through snow towards a bear’s den wondering if, perhaps, the bear was still there?

After our night at the hot spring, we strapped on our snowshoes and climbed and climbed and climbed; leaving behind the spruce and Doug fir, up into the lodgepole, then still higher into alpine fir and larch. We pitched a tent atop packed snow near a frozen lake and then, free at least from heavy packs, made quick time traveling to the rocky ridge where we knew at least one bear had slept the winter. The rain below had been snow up high and the bear’s tracks were now covered. But we found a whitbark pine snag and a prominent rock outcrop that matched those in the photos taken from the plane, which in turn helped us find the general location of where the bear had emerged. After some time, and lots of digging, we discovered some discolored snow, light brown with some bear hair, where the bear must have tunneled out. Like a gold vein leading to the mother lode, we were able to race the bear’s path as we dug. About 10 feet or so down, knowing we were close, I asked Larry if he thought the bear might have been driven back to the den by the storm. “I don’t know,” he replied. And it caused us both to pause. It reminded me of my favorite Far Side cartoon, in which a fat mother bear sits atop a pile of bones in her den, holding up two human skulls as if they were puppets, telling her cubs, “Okay, one more time and it’s off to bed for both of you . . . ‘Hey, Bob, Think there are any bears in this old cave?’ ‘I don’t know Jim. Let’s take a look.’”

A quote about grizzlies from writer Bob McMeans also came to mind: “We must stay out of their bedrooms.” Leave them space, is what he meant, keep some country wild. Stop building homes and roads and trails everywhere. But just then it had a more literal meaning for me, so Larry stood ready with pepper spray while I continued digging. Soon enough, we reached a dark tunnel under the rocks. With headlamp on, I cautiously climbed in, barely squeezing my way through an opening as wide as my shoulders into a dusky room the size of a small tent. Luckily, no one was home. A musky odor remained, along with a soft bed made of bear grass. Hoar frost hung from the ceiling where moisture rising from the bear all winter froze to the granite wall.

And there was hair, lots of hair.

It seemed promising at first. The hair was brown with light, seemingly silver tips. Charles Jonkel, a renowned grizzly bear biologist who spearheads the Great Grizzly Search, suspected grizzly when he first examined it. But the samples didn’t have enough follicles attached, we were told, making it too tough to analyze for DNA. Larry went back to the site that fall, with renowned grizzly bear expert Doug Peacock, author of “Grizzly Years,” to gather more hair and look for other sign. Doug said the area was ideal grizzly habitat, and that the den just might be a grizzly’s. But the hair they brought back proved, conclusively, to be a black bear, a brown-colored black bear, which is common enough. So the hunt continues, like the elusive quest for Bigfoot, searching an enormous landscape for a relatively small, secretive beast.

Several years ago three yearling grizzlies, a sow and two boars, were seen near Noxon, west of Missoula, and just north of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness. A mature sow, likely their mother, was found dead nearby, hit by a train. The cubs denned in the area that winter, and the young sow was found dead come spring. No one knows what happened to the boars.

The author climbing out of the bear's den

In the fall of 2002 a young grizzly bear was seen in the Hogback area of Rock Creek, about 30 miles southeast of Missoula, eating a dead moose. James Jonkel, a grizzly bear manager for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, says the bear probably wandered south from the Blackfoot Valley. From Rock Creek the grizzly wandered west, over the Sapphires and into the Willoughby Creek area of the Bitterroot Valley where he got into garbage and hung out along the Bitterroot River. James says last he knew, the bear seemed to be headed back east towards Rock Creek. “He might be dead, he might have headed into the Pintlers, or maybe he went back towards the Blackfoot.”

I hope not. I like to imagine he crossed the river and headed west, maybe up Sweathouse Creek towards Bear Lake and Bear Creek Pass, then south, past Roaring Lion Creek and Lost Horse, past Lower Bear Lake and Upper Bear Lake, past the Grizzly Lakes and onward, south and west towards Bigfoot Lake, deep into the heart of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness.