In this book, Doug Phillips, like the forests themselves, achieves balance. Phillips has "adroitly avoided placing blame" and understands that there just are social and economic forces at work that will change the forests, for they are neither "underutilized" sources of wealth to be exploited, nor are they museums.
By Don Noble
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/national/local-national-561477.mp3
As one reads along in Discovering Alabama Forests, it is easy, even unavoidable, to hear Doug Phillips' voice talking on his television series, Discovering Alabama, as he walks through a clearing in the woods with his dog or floats past in a canoe on his way to see the Cahaba lilies.
That same calm voice is in this book, although the temptation here to be more strident must have been huge. In his foreword, Rhett Johnson, Director of the Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center at Auburn, praises Phillips for his restraint. Phillips has "adroitly avoided placing blame" and understands that there just are social and economic forces at work that will change the forests, for they are neither "underutilized" sources of wealth to be exploited, nor are they museums.
In this book, Doug Phillips, like the forests themselves, achieves balance.
In my thirty-seven years here in Alabama, I have walked in the woods many times, of course, but never really understood what I was looking at. Two-thirds of Alabama is woods, 22 million acres. Only Oregon and Georgia have comparable percentages. In Alabama there are forty kinds of native oaks. We have 200 varieties of native trees, more than double all the species in all of New England. There are eight species of pine, the grandest of which, the longleaf "whispering" pine, also represents the greatest shame in forest management: we very nearly wiped them out.
For a while, before there were many other building or heating materials?and wood may be still the best building material?everyone cut wood. A household on the frontier, or indeed in a town, would be made of wood and heat with wood, consuming 40-50 cords a year, that is, 60 tons of wood per year per household. In 1840 there were three million miles of wood fencing, all of it steadily rotting and needing to be replaced periodically. The establishment of water-powered sawmills and then chainsaws speeded up the cutting. By the 1850s huge tracts were being cleared for cotton. Ironmaking required massive amounts of wood for smelting. By 1900 the railroads needed 20 million acres of forest for crossties. Phillips calls it the Age of Extermination, as animal life suffered also from massive deforestation.
By 1920, the damage was immense, but we have been coming back ever since then. We now manage our woodlands better; many areas have been reclaimed by nature, and private organizations combined with government agencies have established some rules, some control, but more is needed.
I also learned a lot from the text regarding Alabama's unusual geological and climatic history, and how that produced the state's unusual botanical diversity.
The volume is only half text, however. The dozens of color photographs by Robert Falls, Sr., are magnificent. Falls has photographed trees in winter, the greens and blooms of spring, trees in their color in the fall. There are photos of plants, flowers, ferns, mosses, from the dunes at Orange Beach through the Sipsey Swamp to the highlands of the border with Tennessee. It is not easy to talk about pictures. They so absolutely speak for themselves, but flashes occur to the viewer. Falls has several photos of autumn leaves, sometimes lying on the ground. Ah, I thought, this is what Jackson Pollack was after, only the real thing is even more beautiful.
One series of pictures caught dogwoods in the different seasons and brought to mind Monet, who caught his water lilies or his Japanese bridge or the cathedral at Rouen in different lights, at different seasons.
The book ends with a gentle warning. Earth seems to be the only planet capable of sustaining life, and places like the Alabama forests are why this planet can sustain life, so it might be a good idea not to pave every inch for a strip mall to accommodate a title loan company and a fingernail parlor, and maybe trees two or three or four hundred years old should not be made into lawn furniture.
Don Noble's book reviews can be heard each Monday on Alabama Public Radio at 7:35 a.m. and 4:44 p.m. Recently retired as English professor at The University of Alabama, Don's specialties are Southern and American literature. Don also hosts Bookmark on Alabama Public Television.
