Mortality and Forestry

“Statistically speaking, you will die having missed almost everything.” – Linda Holmes

Linda Holmes wrote these words in 2011. For Linda this realization was tied to the vast number of books in existence in the world. By her very generous and back of the envelope accounting, a person such disposed could read two books or one really big book a week and accumulate 6,500 books by age 80. Even at that accelerated pace, an individual would be still only read a few books of certain genres and certainly miss the vast majority of the books ever written. The huge swaths of books written to date and the rate of new books published every year would make sure that, as she mentioned in the quote above, the reader would still effectively miss almost everything.

My own thoughts of mortality were struck this week not with the book I have been reading for months at this point (authors note: It is seriously good though and you should read Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher because I am going to finish it at some point and would love to talk to people about it, you know, if they happen to get around to finishing it too) but rather while I was walking through the steps of modeling out the future of a forest. The model projects the current mature trees and the new trees on forest floor for the next 100 years in ten year increments. I clicked away and the model showed me the future: 2023, 2033, 2043, 2053, 2063, 2073, 2083, 2093, 2103, 2113. The tall trees got taller, some new trees reached for the sky, and older trees died and fell to the forest floor.

I have run this model so many times and almost always without any consideration to my own relationship to the decades. Most times my only interest has been in reading, understanding, and communicating the numbers that the model spits back at me. Today though, I was thinking about issues I had with the model. I felt that the model was a little overoptimistic on the survival of small trees and did not accurately account for new trees from seed. It was in thinking about which one of us, the computer or me, was right about the future of this forest that I realized I would not be around in 2113 to find out.

Thoughts on my own mortality had likely evaded me for so long because there is so much to think about when it comes to the future of our forests. Climate change is making conservationists think about assisted migration and managing for resilience. Bark beetles have chomped away at acre after acre of spruce. Aspen decline continues to take a toll on aspen stand after aspen stand. The risk of long term drought is ever present. Hemlock forests in the east are on their way out. Anyone thinking about the future of those forests is almost forced to step back for a second and carefully consider what could possibly make the situation on the ground better for the long term.

In the scale of the forest, much like the books, I will miss almost everything. The trees will pass their 300th birthday much in the way they passed their 200th birthday, with indifference and without my presence.  I can only hope that in the forest and in my life I contribute to a brighter and more resilient future.