Extract from the Calendar's Introductory Essay
by Trees for Life Founder and Executive Director, Alan Watson Featherstone

One day, about ten years ago, I stood amidst a scene of complete forest devastation. All around me, as far as I could see, was a ruined ecosystem. Tens of thousands of tree trunks from a once-vast and vibrant forest lay flattened and lifeless in a landscape of ash. No bird songs enlivened the eerie silence of the windswept, wounded land, and there was no sign of any wildlife amongst the desolation.

I had come across numerous scenes of forest destruction before, during travels to the tropical rainforests and to logging sites in places such as the west coast of Vancouver Island in Canada. Distressing though those were, they didn't compare with the scale and overwhelming totality of forest loss I saw that day. I felt tiny and ineffective in the face of the immense destruction which had been wrought upon a healthy and robust ecosystem. My life, and the aspirations I have for my work, seemed to pale into insignificance as I stood there.

However, over the course of the next few hours, other feelings began to surface in me, replacing those initial ones of pain and shock. As I walked amidst the shattered tree trunks and broken stumps, I noticed some young seedling trees growing out of the ashes, and in a few areas herbaceous plants were abundant. Then, towards the end of my time there, I spotted a chipmunk scurrying across the ground, and my spirits lifted at the sight of this seeming miracle. My heart soared as I realised that the huge panorama of ruination contained the small signs of returning life, of hope for a future forest.

When I visited Mount. St. Helens in Washington state in the western USA that day in 1993, it was 13 years after the eruption which devastated 600 square kilometres of the surrounding forest. I was looking for inspiration from the spontaneous ecological restoration of the forest which was taking place there, both for my own project - the restoration of the Caledonian Forest in the Highlands of Scotland - and for my faith in the future; faith that natural forests will continue to flourish and thrive on our increasingly human-dominated and biologically-depleted planet.

For me, hope is one of the most important qualities which is needed in our world today, and one which I seek to embody through my work. Ecological restoration, as the human-assisted recovery of degraded ecosystems, is in essence a work of hope. It is an expression of hope that our culture will change its present destructive relationship with the rest of Nature, and replace it with a more enlightened one, based on a recognition of the importance of all species and ecosystems for the well-being and evolutionary potential of the planet...

Return to Calendar and Engagement Diary 2004