I grew up hunting fishing and running trap lines, so it was only natural that I get a job

working for the California fish and game while I was in college. Later, I spent two decades

working for the U.S. Forest Service.

One morning in September 1993, while I was working for the Forestry Service, I arrived

at a small clear-cut located in the middle fork of Feather River at 11.30 a.m. It was a wild

and scenic spot above the town of Oroville, California, and very remote.

It had taken me two hours to get there.

It was the last of three small clear cuts done on that ridge, just before it dropped down

to the scenic river.

We call those cuts mountain lion cuts after a lion that had been seen there several times.

The last cut was nine acres that headed east up the slope, and at the bottom was a 20-foot

circle of brush that had no trees worth harvesting, so it had been spared.

I crawled into the brush with my lunch and decided to be quiet and hidden as I ate so that

maybe I could see the lion come through.

After 25 minutes, nothing had come by and I was finished with lunch.

As I was packing up, I heard a large limb or a small tree snap a couple hundred yards

across the clear cut. I thought it must be a range cow, so I didn't even bother looking up.

The clear cut had been replanted in the spring. My job that day was to take 24-foot plots

and count how many trees survived in every third

plot.

I walked out a few yards into the clearing and poked my tape measure into the ground,

pulled out 12 feet and started making a circle, counting each tree within the circumference

...