Annie Proulx - Barkskins

“Father, it reeks of the eighteenth century. It no longer fits. It is also true that there is too much cutting. The old forests are going and once they are gone we will have to wait a thousand years or more to see their like. Though nothing will be allowed such a generous measure of time to grow. Most wild American woodlands have already been savaged.”

Dieter inhaled whiskey and erupted in spasmodic coughs. When he recovered, tears streaming, he changed the conversation and said, “Why don’t you tell me what you have seen in your travels?”

• • •

Silence. The hissing lamp. Bursts of sleet on the window. How lined and weary was Charley’s face, Dieter thought; he was old beyond his thirty-five years.

“You ask me about the company’s cut in New Zealand. Where once a grove of the noble kauri grew I came upon acres of devastation. The killing ground could only be differentiated from the gum fields by the fresher stumps.”

Dieter shuddered. The gum fields that he and Lavinia had seen were the most desolate landscapes, churned mud where nothing grew, great holes gouged in the wet earth, swamps without vegetation where moiling creatures clawed for bits of ancient resin to improve paint.

Charley talked, and when he paused Dieter asked, “What of New England, where my cousin Armenius first cruised the woods for James Duke? I have not been there since I visited Mr. Marsh a year or two after you were born.”

“Why, northern New England is a world of denuded mountains scarred by railroad tracks and erosion. Slash, charred logs, millions of stumps and endless miles of washed-out roads. I don’t see how fish can live in New England waters unless they can breathe silt. Large fires every summer, and still the rivers carry log drives — pitifully small sticks for the pulp mills and pressed-wood fabricators.”

Dieter’s voice was low. “Was all destruction? Did you see nothing good and beautiful?”

“Yes. I did. Brazil has the most profoundly diverse forests on earth!” For the first time since his return there was enthusiasm in Charley’s voice. “The striking feature is the mix of species rather than large groves or aggregates of dominant trees. Foreigners are in constant wonderment. When they return to their countries they see how barren and meager are their homelands.”

“I have always championed diversity.”

“It is in the tropics, not only in Brazil but in Colombia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, in India and Malaysia — forests filled with mangoes, guava, passionfruit, starfruit, coconuts, bananas. The tropical forests are the most wondrous forests I ever saw. Spectacular forests, but now attracting men with pencils and measuring sticks, men seeking fruits to export. Cattle ranchers who cut and burn the forest for pasture. They are the places where the punitive aviamento system of the rubber business drives the economy. I take comfort in the thought that none of them can really harm that massive heart of the world. The rain forest is so large and rich it defeats all who try to conquer it.”

Dieter felt he was drawing closer to Charley. “I would very much like to see these forests. But let me say that I heard the same complacent remarks about the Maine and New Hampshire woods, about the Michigan pine forest — too large to be irrecoverably harmed. And I saw them fall. There is no such thing as being too large to fall. They all go down when men come.”

“I hope you are wrong. Dear father, can you understand that I must go back to Brazil? What little I learned of the flowering and fruiting habits of the trees filled me with curiosity. Some seem to follow the rules of invisible seasons, but others flower from the time they sprout until they die. I want to learn why things happen as they do in that place.” He looked at Dieter and said, “Tropical forest soil is rather poor — all the forest’s richness is encased in its living trees. Is that not interesting?”

Dieter shook his head, asked, “Is such a thing possible?”

“It is. And in the level above the soil are shrubs and ferns, young trees, all dependent on shafts of light reaching them. They are not plants in their own right but the slaves of the large trees. Even stranger are the epiphytes, an entire world of parasitic plants that grow on the trees. That forest calls to me.”

Dieter listened with consternation. Charley’s preference for wild forests was disturbing. It was a proof that his older son was a sinking man, fated to be a loser. How to jolt him loose? How to involve him in the company’s work?

“I’ll do what I personally can to help you,” said Dieter, “but you seem destined to observe, perhaps write a book — I do not see you holding a regular job or making a business success.”

“There is no job that I have ever heard of that would be as honorable and interesting as going about and observing the lives of the trees and noting their peculiarities.”

“Still, men must work — even you.” The words came out so mournfully they both laughed.

“I need a real cause, Father, if I am to work at anything. I am no businessman. And I may indeed write a book. Although I know pitifully little and one lifetime is not enough to study even a single tropical forest tree. I want — how can I describe it? I want to discover the dynamo, the central force of the wild forest — all my interest lies in searching out that vital force.”

But Dieter thought dynamo and force sounded too much like a romantic “meaning of life” quest. He had a painful thought — did he not scent the bitter fragrance of madness in Charley? “Why not think about all this over the winter? Stay here to get your bearings, do some reading and meet others interested in trees. We can talk again in a few months. And of course we want you here for the holidays.” He was determined to understand and help this first son, but it seemed a heavy task; Dieter felt himself too old, lost in the forest of his own experience.

So Charley stayed the winter and spring to play a game of seduction with Mrs. James Bardawulf — Caroline — alternately beckoning and evasive; he was determined to get her, to spite his half brother, whom his father favored.

• • •

He was still trying in August, when the great 1910 fires in Montana, Idaho and eastern Washington burned more than three million acres of prime timber and settlements in two days, a raging blowup crown fire jumping and leapfrogging over hundreds of miles, a fire such as no human had ever seen. The country was shocked by headlines describing how the remote heart of America had been destroyed in forty-eight hours, for people believed that the wild essence of the country existed in its great forests somewhere out west. And now they had burned.

Dieter pled with pea-brained politicians and barely literate congressmen for more money and authority for the Forest Service. He spoke out against that governor who said forest fires were a good thing because they opened new country for settlers, and he cursed the congressman from a fire-plagued state who bellowed, “Not one cent for scenery!” He began a regimen of letter writing, wire sending and telephone calls; he volunteered to start new pine and fir seedling nurseries to replant the hideous blackened mountains and stem the landslides of burned soils. He tried to interest his older son.

“Charley, here’s a cause for you — help rejuvenate the spoiled lands. I am meeting this evening at the house with James Bardawulf and Andrew to discuss possible salvage of some of the burned timber. I hope you will join us.” He did not think Charley could resist the battle to heal the wrecked forest.

“It will just happen again,” said Charley in a dismissive tone, “until the yahoos have burned the country clear. You are pleading with men who just don’t care. As for salvage, it seems a bit like rifling the pockets of a corpse.” He left the door ajar as he went out.