I had some pretty stellar experiences as a child. My first that I can
remember was catching a fish on the Atnarko River near Bella Coola when I
was three years old. My Dad wore a buckskin jacket, and I wore a woolen
sweater that my mother made me. We drove around in a Nash Metropolitan. She
was only 23 years old and my dad was 41 years old. I was conceived in Baja
California and my father had two great great aunts who were Cherokee
Indians. My grandmother Nina was born in Kansas, but later moved to
Drumheller.

They told me that my dad was part Indian, my mother all Swede. Anyway my
first fish was very small, may be 8 inches. But in those days that was all
that was really fun, going to a different wilderness lake or river and
catching fish. I once remember the long trip into Quesnel Lake. We lived in
a tent on a sandy beach. There were not too many people. The only place
there were lots of people was at the Regatta in Kelowna once a year. We had
it all too ourselves and enjoyed all the company we could find...so it
seems. We did a lot of fishing and wilderness exploring in a fiberglass
Davidson boat. No paint. You could see the water through it.

Of course the Atnarko is spectacular. It is one of the most famous salmon
rivers in the world and there are many Grizzlies there. At least until
lately. Most of the Atnarko is located in pristine mountainous rainforest.

One time I caught well over one hundred fish when I was a boy. They were
mostly brook trout. I met the Game warden Bob (I still see him here -  he
lived on Murtle Lake for many years) coming out and he asked to look into my
back pack. It was completely full of fish. He said that he used to do the
same thing as I did as a boy, and let me go. He was mainly interested in
catching people poaching Sockeye salmon. I met Pan Phillips one time flying
in a Cessna 172 with my dad. We did a lot of flying over the Chilicotin
Plateau back in the 1960's. We would go there for breakfast. When we met Pan
Phillips at his ranch his family was there, and there was a small stream
full of trout. The day before some grandson and daughter caught over one
hundred fish with a rod. Anyway we set down at every airstrip in the
country. There was not one single clearcut in those days. You could fly for
two or three hours and all you would see is green forest below and pristine
lakes with no roads. Many of the lakes in the Chilicotin that we visited or
flew over were only accessed by wagons and horses. The Chilicotin Indians
used wagons with car tires instead of wooden wheels. When I met a family
there one time the Grandmother could not speak English. She spoke some
Salish or Carrier, and she only offered me some dried fish.

These Indians were never conquered. They killed some twenty Europeans in a
fight after some surveyors came into the area to find a route for the
railroad. The government left them alone after that until the clearcutting
industry came into the area in the 1970's and 1980's. Now much of the area
has giant clearcuts. They dissappear, the forest that is, in seconds. The
feller bunchers can operate by cutting twenty hectares per week there, and
they work at night.

Anyway this is the only place in North America that was never taken control
of by Europeans. But now the clearcutting industry is there scalping and
skinning the timber off the land. Not even grouse will survive after. And
that means the Lynx and snow shoe hares will dissappear. The area is nearly
the size of France. I was out there last week, working on a clear cut at
1500 meters. The snow was all gone, and the block was all planted with
lodgepole pine where they had 'disk trenched' ever square hectare. All the
immature was felled in the block. The measure is taken to prevent the spread
of dwarf mistletoe into the planted crop trees of pine. There is almost a
complete absence of willow and snags. I counted only a few Douglas-fir...far
too few to reproduce and produce viable offspring. They will be inbreed. And
all the natural pine germinate after the planted seedlings are planted. This
means narrowing of the genetic pool through out vast areas of natural pine.
Without the willow, the down timber associated with a wildfire, there will
be no habitat for the pine martin. It needs down timber greater than twenty
centimeter in diameter to hunt voles in the winter. There is no willow to
speak of, therefore mainy species of insects, especially flies (diptera) and
butterflies will dissappear. You see willow is one of the most important
species of plants in the north. It is critically valuable for various
microtines. With the removal or eradication of the dwarf mistle toe the
spruce, the ruffled grouse will dissappear here likely. There are only
scattered buffalo or soap berries that are available in the summer along
with 'grouse berries' (Vaccinium), etc., but the rest of the year there is
not much for the grouse to eat except buds that are above the snow line. The
absence of wildfire in  this ecosystem is a problem when foresters (not all
foresters, nor ecologists) maintain that clearcutting 'mimics' natural
disturbances. The fact is that clearcuts mimic clearcuts, or some one's
imagination about fantasy.

Anyway the reason I had so many fish was because you could not keep them off
of your hook. I had to hike into this canyon, with steep smooth rock on both
sides. There were many deep pools in the river that I could fish in. I got
stuck on a ledge one time. I was there for two hours. Below me there was
rocks and white water. I was so afraid of dying that I promised that I would
never do any bad things in my life...if only I could get out of this
predicament. When the time came for me to attempt to turn around on the
ledge I did it with out fear. I made it but I never forgot the lesson. I
always have been conscious since then about doing some thing that was wrong.
Of course the wrong is really unspecified, and is really something that one
feels is wrong.

When I was very young we used to pick huckle berries for several weeks in
the summer. That was when I learned all the common plants. I also learned to
identify different types of animals such as the microtines. I remember the
small rodent called Zapus saltatus, or the kangaroo mouse. It had a big pad
on the end of it's long tail to help it escape. I learned all the plants by
the time I was 5. Odd that people go to universities later and pay to learn
these plants as part of the forestry degree.

As far as the ethics of growing up in the wilderness is concerned, the main
thing is that you develop a deep understanding and appreciation for the
complexity and wonder of it all. There is no way that a child brought up in
a modern city can appreciate what nature is really about. People that are
raised in cities configure their consciousness according to the linear plans
of streets, the neatness of parks, the order of commerce.

When I lived in a big city for 3 and one half years, I could not tell the
difference between seasons, or days, or rather I was not impressed that
there was much difference between the days. There was this universal sort of
similarity of the city: traffic rushing in the morning, and so on. The
weekend busy with people in the parks, especially on warm days. But the city
is really boring due to the simplicity and uniformity.

When we lived in the small mill town some two hours from the nearest center,
there was only one telephone, and a bus came once per week. There were only
four hundred people there. I lived in an unpainted bunk house. We had all
that we needed nearby. Moose, deer, fish, berries, and we had a store. But I
remember alot of berry picking, fishing, and gathering of different things.

Now we can grow our own garden but when you take berries from the forest, or
hunt a moose, it does not take any cultivation; the food is free, and you
only need to be in the right spot. I once ate caribou steak.

I am glad I did not grow up in a city. I know that I am different. City
trained foresters have few feelings similar to mine. I consider alot of them
as a sub species, and I can never share their enthusiasm for the clearcut
industry. I always felt that the clearcut industry, mini-rotated monocrops
were wrong from the start. In fact in 1972 when I started working as a
forester, I thought that what they were doing when made the first clearcut
visible from town here was that it was an experiment. An experiment that was
merely a curiosity. But to my growing awareness and 28 years of experience
in the clearcut industry, I realized it was to become the mainstay of the
forest industry. The losses to biodiversity and species habitat is now at
the stage where it is cascading like an avalanche. The caribou are nearly
gone, the wolverine, the wolf, the cougars are dissappearing. The goshawks,
the old growth dependent macro lichens, song birds. The clearcutting
devastates habitat. What Weyerhauser is doing now is managing their tree
farm here on a 50 year rotation. The tree farm is located in the Montane
Spruce. It is very dry there and located above 4000 feet. This area is a
watershed for the city nearby. What is interesting is that the forester says
that they will do three passes (clearcuts in succession) and each pass will
be 10 years apart. This will result in all the mature forest being felled in
our area. We watched them do this since 1991. They have met the first
goal...which is to remove all the timber (thirty percent) on a 7000 hectare
community watershed. There are only 2 more passes left for them. The whole
forest was burned over in 1926. A fire that started in a homesteaders field
while burning grass.

bye bye wilderness...

john foster












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