About "A forest ex situ."

A forest, ex situ.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, my childhood was spent exploring the hollows beneath giant Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar, Bigleaf Maple, Red Alder, and Western Hemlock. Beneath these giants, in particularly damp parts of the forest, moss-covered Vine Maple created nature's jungle gym, while the Red Huckleberries growing from numerous decomposing stumps, dense Salmonberry thickets, and trailing Blackberry vines winding their way through the leaf litter provided a ready source of food for my explorations. This was a world that offered adventure fueled by a profusion of life. Giant Sword Ferns, delicate Deer Ferns, epiphytic Licorice Ferns, carpeting mosses, shaggy lichens, and many less-ancient plants clothed the world in green, while the trees formed a vaulted canopy. At times foreboding, but always beautiful. This was the world of my youth.

Fast-forward to my forties.

Colorado, at the edge of the dry, shortgrass prairie, is a far cry ecologically from the boreal rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. Despite being in a microclimate, of sorts, this is still a seasonally arid steppe. It gets very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. And, hot or cold, it is usually very dry. Complicating matters, at an elevation of somewhere around 4,800 feet the air readily loses what little moisture it has. As such, supplemental water is always a concern. Some years it is rarely necessary...others, it is. The trees that thrive here must be survivors, riding the extremes of weather, climate, and soil.

If one is going to build a forest, one must do so responsibly and intelligently. One must be ecologically and climatologically conscious. And that is what I am attempting. Actually, nature is building it. I am simply shaping it and tending it. Most of the trees in the area are native Cottonwoods, Willows, various Junipers, and introduced Siberian Elm and Russian Olive. But the majority of these are not really forest trees, at least not here. And, though I'm not trying to denigrate a particular species of tree, the Siberian Elm ends up a little weedy for my taste and Cottonwoods end up far too big. Willows are riparian. Russian Olive is far too gangley and invasive. Really, most of the trees I have planted are not native to this region. But they have been chosen from a cadre of adaptable trees capable of growing here.

A forest hasn't existed here for millenia, hence the "ex situ". It is out of place, though, and this is my hope, not ecologically insensitive. Our small lot is not nearly so large as the acres I grew up with all those years ago, but I want my son to enjoy the possibilities of exploration that a forest willingly offers. I don't know that the same wildness can be captured, but I hope to capture its wonder. And this is a chronicle of that attempt.