Girls and boys nowadays grow up playing on synthetic flooring instead of warm wooden surfaces. Children surrounded by reinforced concrete instead of imaginative wood grain will find it difficult to connect with wood in their later life.
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Once we believe this, we start neglecting the forest.
It becomes more dangerous for the forest, when our children grow up in houses made of toxic materials, plastic instead of wooden furniture and toys. When they don't get to see and feel the magic and beauty of wood grain, wood floors, toys and musical instruments. It's not the bark beetle which threatens our forests; it is us who do not cherish it. Insects are as much a part of the forest community like birds, fox or deer are. The real cause for the death of our trees is the idea that we don't need them anymore in our daily lives.
The white settlers brought along their own way of life and didn't understand the bison the way Indians did. Because the bison didn't have a place in the hearts of the white population, it did not take long for the animals to become extinct.
As long as the local Native Americans loved, appreciated and respectfully treated the animals, both the Indians and the bison were well. This balance lasted over hundreds of years. The bison meat nourished the Indians and the skins gave them a roof over their head.
And this is where our forests have suffered most ill. Polluted air and bark beetles are only symptoms manifesting what has already happened in the hearts of humanity.
Think about the large herds of bison in the northern America prairies. We can apply this to our forests too and love our woods. We too will be healthier and feel better.
How is 'loving the forest' supposed to look like in our daily life? To love something means to fully integrate it into one's life. The human being or the object of our love must not leave or be banned from our life. The answer is we are feeling well and healthy when we are being loved and able to pass this love on to others. It is well known that people who speak to and touch their plants lovingly have the most beautiful flowers.
Every tree is an amazing living being which connects heaven to earth. The plant and animal communities which live in and around trees constitute the forest. The question is when is a tree well? What is the foundation of our wellbeing?
However, this is a big mistake which is about as erroneous as the planting of monocultures 20, 50, and 100 years ago.
Imagine your child has measles. The doctor does nothing else but counts all the red spots on your child's skin and records it in a highly bureaucratic way. Would you trust this doctor? It is a similar situation with our forest. Statistics alone will not do the trick. Forest managers and farmers have learnt much and nowadays, monocultures are rarely being planted anymore in middle Europe.
Is the decline of forest still an issue today? Our technically advanced world, where all decision-making is done by the logical left brain, has tried to capture the phenomena of forest dieback with environmental impact studies, percentages and statistics. We also registered tree diseases of particular types such as elm, oak and spruce to name just a few.
On the other hand, most of our forests have survived the catastrophic storms of 1990 (violent storms Vivian and Wiebke) quite well. Nowadays, we are able to look at several studies done by governments and forestry departments. We know about the regional dramatic repercussions, for example in the Erz- and Riesengebirge', where whole mountain ranges are bare of trees and are turning into steppe.
A sign post to a positive development?
In the early 1980's, forestry death was brought to the attention of the public for the first time. Dire reports predicted that there would not be a single tree left standing in Europe took turns with appeasements and playing down the problem. I have met people who swap industry regulations for the 'New Moon Calendar' in the same fanatical way.
Nothing ever benefits by fanaticism, pretension and narrow mindedness. To live in harmony with nature has to do with appreciation and consideration and the same goes for wood. Moon calendars, zodiac sign, seasons and the choice of trees are more effective aids for us to befriend nature. However, nature's rules too can be questionable when followed with a very narrow mind.
...but be very concerned about the possibility of glass panels breaking, the wood's slow resistance to insects and fungi as well as toxic residues.
The tools used to grade wood are simply too primitive when we start working within the natural cycles. The wood would have been sprayed against the bark beetle and possibly been dipped into a fungicide. This wood would be perfectly graded and comply with all standards. Nevertheless, I would not use wood that has been so badly mistreated to build a winter garden...
Branches are the organs of a tree and are a big part of the wood story.
For the winter garden I could have used an industrial 'high grade' wood without any knots. It could have grown in an unnatural monoculture, harvested while still juvenile, in the middle of a growth spurt and dried fast in a kiln. We have used beams which have up to 10cm 'splay knots' to support large glass panels. According to standards, these beams are of low grade. However, they have performed perfectly for many years and they will do so for generations to come.
These regulations don't say anything about the right selection or the right time for harvesting trees. They do not mention the markedly different qualities of juvenile and mature trees. There is no comparison between wood drying naturally slow and super-fast kiln drying.
The largest glass panels we ever installed were about 5 meter high thermal glass panels in one piece. These panels are still intact on after many years and have amazed quite a few.
It would be extremely difficult for us to achieve the required qualities (like durability and stability) by solely relying on industry norms. For our winter gardens and glass facades we fit large glass panels of solid untreated timber beams. Those beams have to be absolutely steady. If there is any movement as through cracking or warping, the glass would shatter.
A practical example in the trade laws, norms and standards which regulate the wood industry. They grade by the exact numbers and size of branches in a board or beam. Our experience however shows that the amount of branches is one of the least criteria which contribute to quality.
I am not demonizing all norms and regulations here; however, it simply is erroneous and destructive to reduce our relationship with trees to numbers and regulations. Sorting out and grading the quality of building wood by counting the branches of the trees doesn't result in buildings which last for centuries.
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