Where's Winter?

Click on photo to enlarge

The second storm of the winter hit yesterday with forcasts of heavy snowfall, but only resulted in this dusting, bringing our total snow for the season to about 2 1/2 inches!

Last winter by this time we already had about 8 feet. We could sure use a real storm here sometime soon!

But the forecast did get us busy splitting some more of the pine logs piling up around here anyway (see post below).

There is so much tree cutting going on in the Big Bear area because of the bark-beetle infestation that local pine firewood is very cheap, or even free much of the time, if you're willing to do the hauling and splitting. We've accumulated (and are still collecting) several cords just from our own neighborhood, which we haul home in wheelbarrows.

Last year's heavy winter and wet summer were a welcome relief from the 7 year drought that triggered the bark-beetle infestation.

Global warming contributes too, and the poor forestry practiced during the past century, where we haven't allowed fire to naturally thin our forests, or eliminate underbrush & overpopulations of insects, while adding nutrients to the soil.

Instead we subsidize the building of logging roads and the clear-cutting of older large trees, which puts whole ecosytems out of balance, ruins watersheds, causing landslides & flooding, results in dense forests of smaller similar aged trees, increasing the fire danger, while creating unhealthy forests of reduced diversity.

Above you'll see part of my contribution to logging & deforestation, in our deck and picnic table.

But, in my defense, if all the trees I've planted in my lifetime were to reach maturity, I will have been responsible for the growth of far more wood than I'll ever consume.

I've planted hundreds of trees between here and the Santa Monica mountains in the past 40 years, many of which are still growing, and producing oxygen and wood, at this very moment.

Trees---so beautiful and beneficial, their wood so useful to us in countless ways---are a very renewable resource if we would only harvest them sustainably, and then limit our numbers so we don't keep over-running the planet like so many bark-beetles.