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Full Description
With their towering, cinnamon-colored trunks and dusky green canopies,
ponderosa pine has long been a charismatic icon of the American
West. Yet a quiet unraveling has begun:
in the past decade, in a vast
area from Santa Fe
to the Sierras, more than two hundred million ponderosa have died. While some trees will
survive in cooler places, scientists estimate that by mid-century less than five percent
of the ponderosa in the American Southwest may remain. As the very character of this vast region shifts, what will be left behind?
And how can we come to terms with such profound loss?
In The Twilight
Forest, Gary
Ferguson brings readers
on an expansive journey through
the ponderosa forests
of the Southwest both to mourn-and to celebrate-the forests that nurtured him.
In warm and luminous storytelling, Ferguson
weaves together the human and natural history of
ponderosa, from its march across the West more than 10,000
years ago, to centuries of artists inspired by its dazzling stature and shady passageways. Both wildfire and climate change are constant presences on this journey. Fire is necessary for healthy forests but has turned deadly, while climate change stresses even the hardiest
beings of the natural world. Yet
the story of ponderosa reminds us that
loss can be a gateway to connection-to nature and each other.
While it is tempting to hide from the changes around
us, Ferguson offers a healing approach: "to pick even one of these thousand doors of loss, pull it open and walk through." The resulting journey is
a life-affirming tribute to one
of America's most cherished
wild landscapes.
