Is looking at trees good for you? (Denver, Estes Park: 2014, houses)

[Colorado Rambler]

It depends. For example, imagine looking at a hillside of healthy trees in early October, The aspen, oaks, maples and every other deciduous tree native (or not) to your area will be a riot of color. No more boring hues of green at this time of the season. It looks like somebody just spilled an entire box of paints all over those trees!

The parade of color excites the eye and calms the soul. You find yourself living in the moment just as the philosophers suggest - a moment of wonder. You forget about the dark winter soon to come. This is NOW and why let your mind wander off to a time that is not now when this very moment is so completely amazing? Usually, I am so thrilled to be here now that I’ll wander over to an aspen and give it a big ole hug just as a way of thanking it for making me happy - even if for only a few moments when looking at a tree can be very, very good for you.

Then there’s the flip side of looking at trees (there always seems to be a flip side to most everything). I have been places in the Colorado mountains where all you can see is ridge line after ridge line of dead trees. Maybe they’ve been done in by fire or pine beetle or drought or all of the above. The scene is apocalyptic - it shows a dystopian future that has already arrived. When I leaned against one of those lifeless trees and gazed across the miles of dead forest, I began to cry and couldn’t stop.

Eventually, a concerned man who turned out to be an elk hunter saw me and was compassionate enough to stop and ask me what was wrong. Wordlessly, I pointed to the mountainsides, their beauty made into a horror by this premonition of a Great Dying that is actually going on right now in the Rocky Mountains as I type these words.

This Elk Hunter - this man of the mountains - knew at once what I meant, and his expression changed to one of deep sorrow. Both of us wished we had never seen all those dying trees, and both of our lives seemed to take a turn for the worse thanks to our gazing at so very many lifeless pines. Ecologists tell us that many pines - even hardy ones like Colorado’s beloved and sturdy little Piñon Pines - may all be on the death row that we have created for many of our tree species.

The entire thing was an experience in deep sorrow and terrible loss. Never ever look at these trees, because the experience will only be a bad one.

You may not realize it, but the answer to this question is far from simple, so I have been forced to make a reply at some length. If you are still reading this, go out and give the first tree you see the biggest hug ever. It might be your last chance.

[StealthRabbit]

When living in China, by optometrist insisted that I spent 30 min 2x / day looking at a green landscape without focusing. (resting my eyes)

Colorado everbrowns (Bettle kill) does not qualify. But the hills are green this year (so far)

[interloper1138]

I've only been a Colorado resident for 8 years now, but I never stop feeling profound sadness when I encounter the vast stands of beetle-kill throughout the San Juans and Sangre de Cristo ranges. You'd think you would get used to it, but much like the natural beauty itself, it never stops being powerful.

Having only been here for eight years, I've often wondered about the effect that this mass die-off has had on lifelong residents that are older than I am who can remember decades when the forests were healthier than they are now. Heck, I've watched the beetle kill slowly creep through the Sawatch Range even in my time here. The tops of Poncha Pass and Monarch Pass are almost unrecognizable from the time I first visited in 2014.

Perhaps the worst of it that I've experienced is in the La Garita mountains near Creede. Having climbed nearly all of the high peaks in the area, I can say firsthand that almost every pine tree as far as the eye can see has long-since died. There have been some saplings planted in areas that are being / have been logged, but I wonder if they'll survive the next decade. The only glimmers of hope are a few areas of growing aspen and some ancient bristlecones that are still hanging on.

Sometimes I wonder if by the time I'm in my 80s (45 years from now) Colorado's mountains will more closely resemble those of northern Nevada.

[StealthRabbit]

Originally Posted by interloper1138

I've only been a Colorado resident for 8 years now, ..., I've often wondered about the effect that this mass die-off has had on lifelong residents that are older than I am who can remember decades when the forests were healthier than they are now. ...

Sometimes I wonder if by the time I'm in my 80s (45 years from now) Colorado's mountains will more closely resemble those of northern Nevada.

I'm not a lifelong resident, but left CO in the late 1970's, in part due to the beetle kill / everbrown forests that were nothing like my childhood. (I grew up on a ranch very near RMNP) Rode my horse there often. Beetle kill had raised it's ugly head, and the forest / grassland fire danger was a risk to our livelihood. My dad also had a lumber business (using logs from our forest) that was under threat. Nearly all my grade school neighbors were ranchers that had to leave CO, largely due to property tax issues on our ranches (Ag exemptions were not implemented yet). Most of our ranches have been split into housing, and our lower winter ranch now includes a mtn bike park. No more cow pies allowed! so... we had to leave CO to continue our homes and ranches. It is REALLY tough to leave a farm or ranch that has been in the family for generations. It takes decades to build soils, orchards, forests, buildings, corrals, water systems, conservation measures. But many are forced from their land, just as the first nation people were as well. Now grows plenty of houses and uses plenty of water and power and generates billions in tax revenue. Forests are just collateral damage, just as we are. (Those who spent generations creating nice communities for others to enjoy.) We must move on.

Just spent a week in CO FR and this year is super green. +/- (very pretty today, but...more fuels for eventual wildland fires).

Good luck, fires are just part of the cycle.

[Phil P]

You have to look at the longer scale - cause the immediate view is kinda sad.

If you all want to see what see what CO mountains will look like in 45 years (or maybe longer for things to really establish), come to the Wheeler Peak area in NM. What's it like here? No damn lodgepoles, those trash trees have been competed out. White fir and doug fir are the dominant slope side tree and doug firs go all the way to treeline at times. There's Chihuahua (southwestern white pine), limber, and ponderosa pines all mixed in as well. It's a much better looking forest overall - a truly mixed conifer one. I was on top of Kachina peak looking at each of the ridgelines opposite. At the top there was a bunch of dead spruce, next one down had some dead trees with some aspen, next one down mostly aspen, next one down, all aspen. It's literally a time lapse showing beetle kill and the aspen coming back in afterwards. Without the beetles though the entire mountain would just be evergreen.

Likewise there's a ton of flowers above treeline. In the trees, not really. An alpine grassland may actually be a more productive environment than a forest. The elk and deer actually like the beetle kill cause that allows light to hit the floor and there's a lot more to eat for them. Likewise burn / killed areas keep snow significantly longer - trees melt it much faster cause they are dark.

Why do I say CO will look like Northern NM? Because the precipitation and weather patterns are pretty similar to central CO mountains, just with about a month less of snow and winter. That sounds like a global warmed CO to me.

Likewise with the pinons, those are yet another transitional species. They are going away on the slope bottoms. It's interesting here, the scrub oak have carpeted most of the areas underneath the pinons in the mountains. Next fire or with enough time for the pinons to be outcompeted, the oaks take over, firs sprinkle in, and the pinons are gone. Are they going away? No. In the Great Basin and Wyoming they are concerned that pinons are taking over all the sagebrush land, they are cutting them out trying to keep a historical presence of sagebrush. I don't really buy that sagebrush habitat is something special. You can go wonder out there and there's nothing going on biologically compared to even a pinon forest and much less a mixed conifer one.

The monoculture forests were never healthy. Boreal forests are really unproductive. The -50F temps needed to kill the beetles killed all sorts of other interesting plants. They were a stable, matured ecosystem, but 20,000 years ago they weren't even there cause many of the mountains were glaciers and icecaps. Heck Wisconsin was under a giant sheet of ice. As things shift it's a messy process as the next envionrment moves in, but I'm positive that whatever forest / grassland mix comes in next will be better than what we had in 1980. Anytime you see a forest like this, something is wrong: Cottonwood Pass Taylor Park side

So, what do we do with what we have? My vote is cut them out where the terrein allows that, plant warmer varieties in their stead (like Chihuahua pine) and try to prevent the large burns. Large burns are a reset, but they are the worst option. Better to have all those dead trees just rot while standing.

[Wheatridger]

Embracing climate change in the forests and steering in towards a more sustainable state might look something like that. The current tangle of lodgepole pines in Colorado's subalpine life zones doesn't seem biologically productive or historically accurate or pretty to look at. Your photo proves that last point well! I've spent too many hours hiking through such drab terrain. Just because it's he current status quo, it might not be worth preserving.

[webster]

Yes, looking at trees is good for a person, it's one reason some people become bonsai enthusiasts - a miniature tree in one's home. Years ago, Andy Rooney did a segment on trees and how amazing they are, growing from a minuscule slip to massive living things (Rooney was a wood turner). Judi Dench: My Passion for Trees BBC Documentary 2017 is worth watching. A person can now listen to what is going on inside them with the right equipment and how they communicate with each other chemically in the ground.

About 10 or more years ago, I went on a day hike up to Devil's Head Fire Tower Lookout south of Denver. It was heartbreaking to see the devastation from fire, but it looks like recovery is going well. https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/c...okout-trail--2

[Kathy884]

Yes -- so sad to see all those hurting trees I saw in Estes Park / RMNP on my last visit, but the area is still stunning. Hopefully nature will find a way.

I love my tress. I have two HUGE Ash ones in my property and I pay money every two years for them to be treated for bore ask, do preventative snaking to the root don't get in my sewer system, and pay someone to zap up all the leaves (135 bags when we did it ourselves -- way too much). But I LOVE the trees. They provide great shape and my roofer said the shade is why my shingle roof lasted so long -- Finally replaced it after 25 or so years.

[webster]

I have 12 oaks and some other trees. I mower mulch the leaves and leave them.

[mlulu23]

Originally Posted by webster

I have 12 oaks and some other trees. I mower mulch the leaves and leave them.

That's the way to do it. Leaves are full of minerals that enrich the soil. No one comes to the wild forests, and cleans up the leaves. A beautiful, and varied ecosystem is the result.