Not Just Trees: The Legacy of a Douglas-Fir Forest

Describing the Oregon Coast Range could be a rugged task, but author Jane Claire Dirks-Edmund takes a graceful approach.She explores a life of living in the ancient forest of Saddleback Mountain, known today as Saddle Bag Mountain, on the Van Duzer Corridor in Lincoln County. Covering a 60 year segment, Dirks-Edmund writes of a captivating tale of the mighty Douglas-firs, cedars and hemlocks that once grew there.But as with anything, there's more to the story. This book is also about the lives of great and small creatures and plants, of slugs and worms, spiders and bugs, butterflies and birds, lichens and mosses.This in-depth study has never been undertaken on a single western forest before, nor is it likely to ever be repeated, according to the publisher WSU Press. The title of the book refers to the fact that more than trees make up a forest.It reveals all that is lost when an ancient forest is destroyed and the story of a tenacious woman, an ecologist who studied Oregon flora and fauna before there were guidebooks. The author stresses that this is not a technical book and one that could be enjoyed by anyone interested in the nature and ecology of the Northwest.Dirks-Edmund began studying a small parcel of ancient forest in western Oregon while an undergraduate student, working with her mentor, James A. Macnab, at Linfield College in McMinnville. After several more years of schooling and teaching, she returned to studying her beloved forest through its logging in the 1940s and clear cutting in the 1980s.Not Just Trees is a story close to Dirks-Edumund's heart which is shown through the pages with a passionate intensity. The deeper one reads into the book, the more her love for the forests wears on the reader. It inspires those who are concerned about what has been lost to have hope for the future of forests.