Happy Birthday National Forests!

This is the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the United States Forest Service, which counts its beginning as the passing of the Weeks Act in 1911, which gave the Department of Agriculture the funds to purchase 9 million acres in the Eastern states.   The Service now takes care of 193 million acres throughout the 50 states.  

Two days ago, I worked out that I wanted to stay in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest near Mt. St. Helen in Washington State during my summer tour.  I began to wonder who in the heck Gifford Pinchot was.   Then last night there was a two hour documentary on public television about the Forest Service and there he was, the first National Forester.  He was taught to love the forest by his parents.  When he went to Harvard he announced he wanted to become a forester.  The problem was there was no forestry school in the United States.

Pinchot went on to study in France and Germany and came back with the basic idea of conservation, which was to use the forests, minerals, and wildlife for the "Good of All".   That has evolved to add recreation, and even later, for the good of the creatures who live in the forests.  It is a balancing act that can never keep everyone happy.  Those of us who love the forests are never happy to see lumber trucks.  Deer hunters are not happy with wolves.   Lumbermen are not happy about the roadless rules setting some areas out of their reach.  Gary and I don't like ATVs and loud motorboats.  Somehow, the Forest Service works things out.

One of the historian presenters in the program was Professor William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  He is a celebrated historian who is soon to assume the title of president of the American Historical Association.  He is also under attack by the Wisconsin GOP conservatives because he wrote an op ed piece about the history of unions in Wisconsin for the New York Times.  It was pretty straightforward but was taken as an attack by the Walker Administration who have demanded all of the professor's e-mails. However, it seems he does his non-university writing on his home computer, and guess what, freedom of speech and intellectual exchange is still protected from people like our governor.

So history and the present run together in this state and in my life.