Over the past couple of weeks, I have spent an unhealthy amount of time on Peeling Back The Bark, the wonderful blog of the Forest History Society (whose website and archives are just as good). The Forest History Society is a “nonprofit educational institution that links the past to the future by identifying, collecting, preserving, interpreting, and disseminating information on the history of interactions between people, forests, and their related resources — timber, water, soil, forage, fish and wildlife, recreation, and scenic or spiritual values.”

Yep. Sounds good to me.

From Forgotten Characters of Forest History (do you know Ev’rett The Forest Evergreen?) to the American Tree Farm archival documents, the whole site is the toppermost. Best way to experience it is to experience it, so click here.

Snowshoeing in Roosevelt National Forest near Nederland, CO. Hope everyone is having a happy ending to 2011.

I, the keeper of the mountain
You, the morning flower

++++++

MP3: The Flatlanders – Keeper Of The Mountain

I have a couple friends who last year up and moved to Kenai, Alaska (just southwest of Anchorage, north of Kodiak Island).  Since their move, I’ve been living vicariously through their amazing photos and am hoping to make it there by summer’s end. Kenai is just across a Gulf of Alaska inlet and less than 50 miles from Lake Clark National Park & Preserve. The best way to access Lake Clark is by small plane, on wheels, floats, or skis. There is no highway access to the park, from anywhere.

When Dick Proenneke passed away in 2003 (after living alone in the wilderness for over 30 years), he entrusted his handbuilt cabin and cache to the NPS, in the Twin Lakes region of Lake Clark. The cabin now stands and serves as a museum of Prokenneke and his legacy, maintained by the park service year round. I’m most of the way through More Readings from One Man’s Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke, 1974-1980 and it’s making me more itchy footed by the day to get up there.

Anyone ever been?

The NYT takes a look at the state park dilemma and what some parks will be doing to stay open this season:

Here in Washington, one of only a handful of states that has not charged entrance fees to state parks, the revenue stream is about to change. Beginning July 1, the parks will no longer receive state money for their operating budgets. Instead, they will rely directly on new entrance fees — $30 for an annual pass, $10 for one day. It is far from clear that the new plan will compensate for the $70 million in state money that parks are losing each year.

“We’re totally free of the tax system,” said Jack Hartt, the manager here at Deception Pass State Park. “If you support the park system, you’ll buy a pass. If not, you won’t.”

“Customers,” Mr. Hartt said, “is the new buzzword.”

Thank you to Casey Greene from Adventure Cycling for sending over these photos of a biking trip he did in July of 2010. From the Selkirks in Northern Idaho to the North Fork Flathead Valley in Montana, Casey stayed at eight Forest Service lookouts in ten days. Good stuff.

Located in New Mexico an hour from Santa Fe, the 33,677 acres Bandelier National Monument preserves the homes of Ancestral Pueblo People. The park is named after Swiss anthropologist Adolph Bandelier, who researched the cultures of the area in the late 19th century. Bandelier was designated a National Monument on February 11, 1916, while most of its backcountry became a “designated wilderness” in October 1976. .

Above are paintings by Pablita Velarde, which were comissioned by Bandelier under the Works Progression Administration in the early 40s. See many more here.

Yes, it started on Friday, April 16th, but it goes until April 24th, so don’t miss your chance to get out to your favorite national park this week FOR FREE. That’s right, all 394 national parks are waiving their entrance fee until Sunday, so you still have one more weekend if you can’t manage a weekday trip. It’s all part of National Park Week, brought to you by the National Park Service.

Or you could stay home, pay the small fee on a weekday/weekend that’s way less crowded, and avoid the mayhem of the big parks.

NPR did a piece last week about the alarmingly dwindling gray wolf population on Isle Royale which is definitely worth reading. Isle Royale, for those unfamiliar, is a large (200+ sq. miles) island in Michigan, off the northern shore of Lake Superior near Ontario. Isle Royale boasts no roads, flying or floating its visitors in by small bush planes or via ferry. The island also only provides year round home to a very small handful of people. Less people visit Isle Royale National Park in a year than the Smokies get in a day.

Isle Royale sits 15 miles off the shore from Ontario, its location playing an important role in the island’s moose and wolf relationship. This predator-prey relationship has been studied for quite some time, virtually untouched by human interaction. The island’s location allowed moose to swim to the island, it is suspected, sometime around the turn of the 20th century. This distance does not allow other “similar” predators or prey to swim to the island, like deer or coyote. It is thought that wolves then traveled an ice bridge from Canada as soon as 60 years ago, and numbers flourished to near 50+ until recent years. Wolves tend to prey on the weakest of the moose, allowing both species to in turn grow stronger and more vital.

Recently, because of “parovirus, bitter winters, hunger and warfare between packs” the Isle Royale wolf numbers have dwindled to 15, with a suspected one or two reproducing females. If both of these females were to die without raising a healthy litter of pups, this would spell the end of the gray wolf on the island.

Cold Splinters is hoping to make the jaunt to Isle Royale later this summer. Beautiful place.

A former coworker of mine sent me this gem of a brochure in an email a couple of weeks ago. This is the 2010 (yes, 2010) brochure for Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest. I mean, come on, no matter how small of a budget any public land has, to hold onto this thing until 2010 is, well, fantastic. I think…

The MTNF covers approximately 1.5 million acres, 78,000 acres of which are Wilderness and National Scenic River area. It spans 29 counties and represents 11% of all forested land in Missouri. I’ve never been there. Have you?

Download the full brochure here. The awesome pictures don’t stop at the cover.