By Jane Valencia
Mabel Moses, a graduate of University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry, now lives on Haida Gwaii. Part 1 of this series appeared in our April 2025 issue. In Part 2, we spend some time in the forest.
All quotes in this article are from Mabel Moses.
In Part 1, Mabel spoke of the tensions among perspectives in Forestry that she encountered in her studies at UBC, and in her summer work in the industry. What may seem like contrary views appear even with Mabel’s life.
Going into the Forestry program, Mabel acknowledges, “I was definitely a bit of a tree hugger.” That said, “When we built our house, we cut down all those trees and got them milled on Vashon. And I got to watch all that happen. I’ve always loved building things and carpentry. So I think I’ve also always been kind of excited when I see logging because I’m like, oh, that’s where all the wood comes from.”
This perhaps nurtured her ability to understand the different perspectives and relationships that people can have with the forest. “It’s a living thing, but we also need to kill it to live.”
But within this need to harvest, is a field dominated by the impersonal.
“One of the foundational things in my degree is learning how we decide how much logging is sustainable for our forests. The basic philosophy underlying these decisions comes from math equations made when Europe figured out they were running out of wood. These equations will tell you how to harvest your forest so you have a consistent supply of 80 or so year-old trees. ‘Sustainable Forestry,’ meaning you sustain a supply of wood. It feels sort of like farming.
“It’s my understanding that a lot of forestry is still following these equations, which is the idea that if you’re harvesting at or below the rate that trees are growing back, you’ll be fine.”
In BC, loss to wildfires is accounted for in how much harvest is allowed.
“In my value system, it’s kind of a gross way to look at it. ‘How much can we possibly take from the forest without depleting this as a resource for ourselves?’ is how it’s looked at.
“Can we go a step further? And ask, What is a forest? Is it just trees? Is it a monocrop of a single tree species, planted so densely that understory plants do not have light to grow? Because if a forest is more than just trees, if a forest is a diverse community of plants, animals, insects, then I don’t think we are being very sustainable maintaining our ‘forests.’ We are logging diverse forests and replanting them to densely packed trees with little habitat for mammals, amphibians, and insects.”
Mabel describes another difference between old-growth and newly planted forests. Something she didn’t expect would hit her so dramatically until she experienced it:
“Last summer I was working during a heat wave. I’d get into the old growth in the morning when it was still cool, work there all day and feel happy, relaxed, surrounded by good smells and soft moss. And then as soon as I’d walk out, either into a second-growth forest that’s growing up, or sometimes into a clear cut, the heat just hits. We’re actually in a heat wave. And I wouldn’t even realize it when I was in the old-growth forest because they’re just built to be resilient. They’ll be a lot more cool and feel a lot more normal. The plants will still be healthy, while outside of them the second-growth and clear-cuts feel much drier, with wilted plants, and more effects of the heat wave.”
Mabel reiterates that this is just her observation, but “It’d be cool to do more studies on this since heat waves are more and more common every summer around here.”
Not only do the old-growth forests seem to modulate temperature, they offer other benefits and gifts, both quantifiable and not.
“When I’m in them, my science mind is going, ‘Oh, this is so exciting. Look at all these species, look at all these homes for birds and other stuff too.’ But under all of it is a feeling of being taken care of. I feel calm and that it’s going to be okay. I am surrounded by thousand-year-old beings, and it feels like being a little child in your mother’s womb.
“The sensation is different in second-growth forests. It feels like there are a lot of struggles In there. You can tell that all the trees are just doing their best, but it’s not the same.”
The experiential and spiritual side of old-growth forests is what’s most important to Mabel personally, and this can be very painful.
“It’s hard because, a lot of the time I’ll be working in old-growth forests where the reason we have access to them is because there’s a logging road to them. A lot of the time, they’ll have a cut block boundary around them, and you’ll be in them and having these amazing experiences. I do a lot of digging in the soil and you’ll be a meter down into thousands and thousands of years of soil, and you just feel kind of euphoric. It might be the methane. Sometimes when I’m digging, the soil is the best smell in the world. So full of history and life.”
Mabel notes that there are studies about how soil makes you happy, and indeed that is the effect for her.
“And then I’ll wake myself up and recall, I’m in a cut block right now. Right next to me there’s a road right-of-way tag, and within a year it’s all going to be gone.
“There’ve been moments with my whole team where we just cry. Afterwards we’re like, this is so devastating.
“Because so many of the old-growth trees, you just look at them and know that as soon as they’re cut, they’re going to splinter into a million pieces. Old-growth cut blocks are filled with splinters and chunks of thousand year-old trees that were too rotten to even make shingles out of. We drill tree cores into them for our studies, so we know they’re hollow on the inside; they’re half-rotten. I look at them and wonder, how much monetary value can you actually get out of this? Most of the old growth that’s left isn’t the solid ‘healthy’ trees you see in old logging photos; it’s the scraggly, gnarled, and rotten stuff that wasn’t cut yet because most of it isn’t suitable for lumber.
“But they’re beautiful and hold so many stories. This is a living being that is over a thousand years old. I can say that because I’ve gone on stumps and counted over a thousand rings. And I’ve laid on stumps and stretched my hands above my head, and not been able to lay across the entire thing, feet to hands.
“Sometimes it feels like the most that you can do is just sit with a tree and just be like, ‘I’m the last person who is going to sit with this tree.’ That’s where I get emotional.”
Mabel adds that most of her experience and knowledge of the old-growth industry centers around British Columbia. In Washington State, forestry practices are a bit different.
“There are not many temperate rainforests in the world, even less old-growth temperate rainforest; they are so special and they’re so much more than wood products.
“But they also are wood products, and I love using wood. It would just be nice to create a culture where we use it and grow it back more intentionally.”
To be continued.
