Customer Reviews

Lob Trees in the Wilderness: The Human and Natural History of the Boundary Waters

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When you arrive at your entry point in the Boundary Waters, put your canoe into the water and paddle across that peripheral lake to the first portage, you see yourself immersed in a pristine wilderness, largely untrammeled by human influences. Guess again. For all its beauty and grandeur, human influences are evident throughout the wilderness: from the herbaceous species you'll see on portages; to remnant patches of landscape plants where outfitters had their cabins; to red pine stands planted by old timber operations; to the changes in forest composition brought about by earlier logging and suppression of natural wildfires.

And it didn't start with the white man. Ahlgren's book illuminates the earlier influences from Native American tribes, first the Cree and Sioux, then the Ojibwe. He explains why different tribes succeeded each other in populating this area, and how their different ways of life affected their use of the land and their relationships with Europeans. The era of the voyageur fur traders, as it affected early settlement and resource use, is also covered.

The result is a fascinating history of human influences in a beloved wilderness, influences both faint and profound. It manages to be both philosophical and practical. It will invigorate your perception of wilderness.

Ahlgren has a scope of knowledge that allows him to distil volumes of research into a concise, readable, even poetic book. It is constructed around the theme of lob trees -- shoreline trees that were pruned just below the crown, to help the voyageurs in navigation. Ahlgren uses a different species of tree common in these sub-boreal forests to guide us through the voyage of understanding human influence in the Boundary Waters: jack pine introduces the chapter on fire disturbance; birch introduces a chapter focusing on Native Americans; white pine is the lob tree for timber, white spruce for pulpwood. This well-integrated thematic approach puts it in line with other classic naturalist writings such as Aldo Leopold's _A Sand County Almanac_.

Naturalist writing isn't just about bringing science to the masses. It's about sharing an appreciation of special places and phenomena -- appreciation in the sense of understanding and in the sense of valuing. As an exemplary contribution to this genre, this book should be of great interest to anyone who loves wilderness and wants to hone their vision when entering natural settings.