Distinctly Montana Magazine

Tree Ring Pens Tell the Story of the Forest By Shawn Regan W hen Dave Wager fells a tree, he gets a glimpse into the past. As we trudge through a forest in the mountains of western Montana, the extent of this history becomes apparent. Surrounding us is a tall stand of ponderosa pines, their thick, red bark attesting to their age, which Wager estimates to be 300-years-old. Stopping beneath an old ponderosa, we examine the debris left from Wager���s latest harvest: a young Douglas fir that had taken up residence a few yards from the giant pine. By the time Lewis and Clark passed through the area in 1805, this ponderosa pine was already well established. But the forest that surrounded the tree back then was quite different. Frequent low-intensity fires, both naturally occurring and man-made by Native Americans, maintained a sparse, open understory suitable for hunting and resulted in a forest dominated by large, fire-resistant species such as ponderosa pines and western larch. With fires occurring on average every five to 30 years, the pine-larch forests relied on fire for regeneration. Over the next century, logging removed most of the pine���s brethren, and by the early 20th century a policy of fire suppression came to dominate forest management. What remained of the historic pine-larch forests existed either as an act of preservation or due to a forester���s oversight���or because the terrain was simply too steep for logging. Around this time, Douglas firs, like the one Wager felled, began to engulf the forest. Wager is working to protect what remains of this oldgrowth pine forest, and he is doing so in an unusual way��� 18 by selling pens. His company, Tree Ring Pens, restores small forest stands such as this one by removing dense understory trees and crafting them into high-end pens. Each pen displays the tree���s annual growth rings, which reveal the events that shaped the tree, the surrounding forest, and the American West. THE SECRET LIFE OF TREES You can tell a lot about the past from tree rings. Dendrochronology, or tree ring dating, has been used by scientists for decades to analyze the historical records kept by tree rings. Past forest and climate conditions, including the incidence of fire, drought, and disease, all reveal themselves in the patterns of a tree���s growth rings. Standing over a log from his most recent thinning project, Wager points out events that occurred during the life of the hundred-year-old Douglas fir. There was the drought of 1918-1922, indicated by a narrow set of rings, which brought the Homestead boom to an end in Montana. There was another drought in the 1930s, associated with D I ST I NCT LY M ONTANA ��� SPRI NG 2013

• Cover