Where trees used to be
Matthew Havens and Damien Gagne take a trip into the woods in search of the “sustainable” forest
Text & Photos: Matthew Havens and Damien Gagne
We are very disconnected from the source of many of the products we use everyday — a hamburger is difficult to connect to the cow, and paper is difficult to connect to the trees from which it originated.
We decided to close this gap and see the source of paper for ourselves by visiting some logging operations in Manitoba. We had heard that ours was one of the last provinces in Canada to allow logging in provincial parks.
Armed with topographical maps, a handheld global positioning system and a pickup full of camping gear, we set off to begin our search in Nopiming Park, northeast of Lac du Bonnet.
Day one: desert of sawdust
Just under two hours had passed since we left Winnipeg when we entered the park where the main road becomes gravel. We pulled off at the entrance to a long, overgrown roadway to stretch our legs. Damien wandered off into the bush and stumbled across our first find of the trip.
He had found an open area in the forest devoid of plant growth, covered in what first appeared to be sand. We soon discovered that the “sand” was sawdust more than a metre deep, covering an area roughly the size of half a football field. Behind that we found a huge depression filled with scrap wood from logs that had been milled into boards. It looked like either an old sawmill site or just a dumping ground for by-products of the local logging industry. Among the scrap was a decomposing newspaper printed in September of 1991. We had only been in the park 20 minutes when, by fluke, we found major evidence of logging.
When you drive along a road in the forest you cannot see clear-cutting. You are not supposed to be able to see it, but it’s there. How do you find something that is unlikely to have a sign on the side of the road indicating “Clear cut next exit 1 km”?
After driving for several minutes, we spotted an unmarked road heading into the forest. Our forest-sense was tingling, because the gravel road had been ploughed and churned up to make it impassable by vehicle. Logging companies are required to do this after a job in order to limit access to the area by hunters, fishers, campers and others, preventing greater impact to an area that has been clear-cut.
We left the vehicle to continue on foot. Two hundred metres later we found our first clear-cut area. With forestry such a huge prime industry in Canada, it was interesting to see it — unlike most Canadians who won’t have the chance — in the pulpy wood flesh. Our first impressions were ones of unnatural destruction and desolation. Fresh, green forest ringed an area of grey and black, eerily quiet wasteland about three kilometres square. Industry claims that logging closely mimics natural disturbances in the forest. What we were walking through didn’t seem very natural.
Everything had been taken down — not cut: the stumps left behind appeared as if the trees had been ripped away or even pinched off. Parts of the clear-cut area were now flooded with about six inches of water, making what was once forest now appear more like swamp. From the limited new growth of grasses and brush, we estimated the cut to be three to five years old.
The witty humour slowed and the hi-jinx-filled trip turned into a struggle to keep positive while we walked through this dead and dying environment. We wondered if someone at some time felt guilt for this destruction or perhaps now prides in this “progress.” Day one ended with us setting up camp, eating a good dinner that was cooked over a fire and talking until bedtime.
Day two: awkward silence
We awoke on day two, and after eating a quick breakfast and downing some instant coffee, we packed up and headed west out of the park. It didn’t take long before we found another patch of clear-cut forest.
Logging companies leave strips of trees behind to break up the line of sight in a clear-cut area, be it for aesthetics or ecological reasons. Barely perceptible and hardly breaking the line of sight, the strips left behind in this area, which was cut last year, were not much wider than five metres — and less in many places. The government has no regulations, only guidelines for the industry, regarding these strips; up to a third of the trees we saw were falling over from erosion or wind.
Exploring areas that were once full of life, we split up and went about our photography. Thoughts went through our heads about the forest’s future and whether or not our grandchildren would have the same exposure to it that we sometimes take for granted.
One thing that really stood out to us in these clear-cut areas was the amount of waste. It seemed that the company left behind a lot of logs that were on the small side, about 20 centimetres in diameter or less. The pine and spruce harvested in this area are used strictly for pulp and paper, not for boards or any other wood products. As we walked and tripped over these logs throughout the day and stacked some for our campfire that night, we couldn’t help but wonder if these young trees became garbage because they just wouldn’t have made good newsprint.
That night after our supper, we noticed how strange it felt to be in this open area in the middle of a forest — the only noises we heard were the echoes from our own voices as the sound waves bounced off of some far away trees. The lack of trees and animal life made us appreciate what it must be like to spend time in a bombed-out city.
Day three: forest turned to gravel
Day three, the last one of our trip, found us on the trail of current cutting sites. We were hoping to get some pictures of logging in action, but it was Sunday and we had no such luck. We did find the very large machinery parked on a site of fresh cutting that had taken place only a day or two earlier.
This area was connected by a new road that did not appear on our topographical map. The industry, by necessity, has become very efficient at constructing roads through the forest. As you drive, you see the various-sized pits where they have dug gravel out of the ground beside the road to construct the routes to their government-granted timber license areas. We came across one particularly big hole that was filling with water and wondered whether that land would ever completely recover from the damage.
The newly cut area was more of the same wasteland we had experienced the first two days but with a very fresh feel and smell to it. Everything lying on the ground and the huge piles of logs stacked intermittently through the cut seemed very green and so close to life; it was hard to imagine the area would become one of the dark, dreary, dead zones that we had visited the day before. The logging machines were parked in the clear cut waiting to go back to their work.
Returning to a main road, we ran into a surprise stockpile of wood that was unimaginably large. There were two piles that were stacked 15 feet high and almost half a kilometre long. Only now did we realize how much cutting was actually taking place.
To end our trip, we decided to head to the Pine Falls Paper Company mill in Pine Falls, Manitoba. In the mill’s parking lot, we came across a display made by the company that explained how the sustainable forest worked and what the company was doing to be a good corporate citizen. It was a very interesting display, indeed.
We hoped for a tour of the mill and a chance to ask a company representative some straightforward questions about what we had seen in the forest, but instead we were greeted by a large sign stating: “NO MILL TOURS.” I guess they had been expecting us.
