Jesse Logan is literally a man of the treeline. Much of his former career as a civil servant
was spent studying why forests of the American West live or die from the voracious jaws of beetles. He amassed an impressive body of work
publishing papers as a researcher. He is also revered, even among
millennial-aged telemark skiers, for his ability to hold his own off-piste with
wayfarers a third his age. Mountain Journal welcomes Logan to its stable of
columnists.
“I grew up in
Southern Colorado leading a largely unsupervised life along the Arkansas River
along with my brother and a few friends,” Logan says. “Our heroes were cowboys,
mountain men and forest rangers, not academicians or intellectuals. However, after
I got in college, mostly by default, I discovered how fun it was to learn about
things and actually ponder how they worked. That led to a career in science and
a life of advocacy for the values that were formed in the woods and the waters
of the Arkansas River. I hope to express both these experiences, and the passions
they invoke, in writing for the Mountain Journal.”
MOUNTAIN JOURNAL: You are an internationally-recognized
expert on the insect predators of whitebark pine and other evergreen species, a
person described by some of your recreation friends as being a ‘funhog”, a data
cruncher who spent decades as a civil servant/researcher in the employ of the
United States Forest Service, and now, in semi-retirement, a ponderer with a
view of the Yellowstone River and the Absaroka Mountains? What ties all
of the above together?
JESSE LOGAN: Well, first of all I wouldn’t call myself a funhog. I think that word carries the wrong connotation. I would refer to myself as someone whose spiritual essence is founded in
wilderness and wilderness, and that is, in fact, what ties all the
aforementioned together.
MOJO: How has being a
field scientist shaped the way you think about the world and your approach to
arriving at conclusions?
LOGAN: Science is a formalized way of thinking about the
world, and natural science is applying that way of thinking to the physical
world around us. In essence, problem solving in a formalized way. A part of
this process that is often not appreciated by the general public, is an active
attempt to falsify the leading hypotheses that explain interesting phenomena.
The imperative to falsify what you think to be fact has led to the general misconception
that even widely accepted phenomena, like global warming, are somehow controversial
or tentative – they’re not. It’s just science’s way of gathering evidence to strengthening
hypothesis to principle to a “law of nature.”
MOJO: You have spoken about how your own understanding of
nature has undergone an evolution, to the point that you realize the shortfalls
of science taking only a cold, analytical, allegedly purely objective approach
to interpreting things occurring in big landscapes. Today, you also hold huge
reverence for the "soul" of a place, and the intelligence of
organisms. You’ve also mentioned your Leopoldian appreciation for recognizing
the multiple parts in complex ecological systems. What triggered the change?
LOGAN: I wouldn’t say that embracing a scientific view
negates a dual spiritual point of view, and in fact, some of the most passionate
champions of the spiritual quality of the natural world come from scientists.
Take E. O. Wilson or Jane Goodall, as cases in point, and the list goes on. For
myself, I’m increasingly interested in learning, and trying to incorporate,
indigenous knowledge and experience within the frame of western science.
MOJO: How does that
work?
LOGAN: As I interact with and observe wildlife in as close
to a natural setting that we have left, Yellowstone National Park, I am
increasingly aware that not only is there a continuum of what we call emotion
and intelligence from other animals to us; but also, by some measures of
intelligence, animals far exceed anything we possess. Take, for example, the geographic
intelligence of the Clark’s Nutcracker who remembers the exact location (not a
few centimeters off, but the exact spot) for thousands of seed caches, widely
dispersed across a complex landscape - Now, where was it I put my car keys? What
I am trying to say is that there is nothing innately cold about analysis, and
nothing innately soft about indigenous or empirical knowledge.
I don’t think anything actually triggered a change, so much
as my perception of “complex ecological systems” evolved, first as a kid trying
to understand enough about the natural world to be a successful hunter/fisher,
through formal training as a “Systems Ecologist”, and finally as an old man
trying to better understand my place in a universe that I’m just passing
through.
MOJO: In some
of your forthcoming columns you're going to write about the importance of
ground-truthing what you think you know, that it is key to maintaining both
honesty and humility in your perspective. What bugs you about the way
scientific information is conveyed in today's world and share some thoughts
about the public's inability to move beyond simple black and white attitudes
toward nature?
LOGAN: Wow, that’s a wide-ranging question with answers that
require a lot of more room than we have here now. Ground-truthing can be
formal, as in verifying live from dead trees that have been identified in an
aerial photograph, or it can be far more informal, like paying attention to
your surroundings in any activity involving the natural world, Catching a big
fish is part of fly fishing, but the real essence might be gaining the
understanding that streams and rivers are the threads that stitch together the
fabric of the landscape.
So far as scientific writing, I had a successful career and
made a good living writing articles that almost no one reads, and that is true
for most scientists. Scientists largely write for other scientists and in a
language intended to be precise, but that is more often than not obscure. It’s
little wonder that the general public doesn’t understand or appreciate science,
or in particular, the scientific method. There are notable exceptions, of
course, but they are few and far between. What is needed is a voice that
effectively synthesizes science, culture, and spirituality – in other word, a
good story teller.
MOJO: What's your
greatest worry about climate change?
LOGAN: I know enough about non-linear dynamics to understand
critical points, hysteresis, and tipping points. What scares me about delayed
feedback is that we may be beyond these critical points before we even
recognize there is a problem – and that is even without adding the danger of those
who would intentionally obfuscate readily observable evidence for their own
personal gain. Just consider this; there is strong evidence for liquid water on
the surface of both Venus and Mars, water that was lost on these planets
through runaway global warming. Think of that as a bedtime story for your
grandkids – and then try to go asleep yourself.
MOJO: You love to ski in winter, flyfish in summer, and
generally ramble in wild country. Share a few thoughts about your philosophy
that humans are ethically obligated to protect the things we love.
LOGAN: For me, there
is a simple ethic of protecting the things that add meaning to your own life.
Humans are capable of existing in almost unimaginable squalor – take any barrio
at the edge of a sprawling third-world city - but it is only ethical to strive
for life beyond existence. “Protection” is the key word here, it is not enough
to appreciate something; ethics comes about by protecting the things we value,
even if we are unable to experience them ourselves.
I may never see, for example, the Great Barrier Reef, but it
breaks my heart to learn that it, considered by some the world’s largest living
organism, is now turning dead as a result of climate warming and carbon-dioxide
loading in the water. It’s my ethical obligation to resist those who would deny,
evade, or mislead the public that things like the Great Barrier Reef, or closer
to home, the demise of whitebark pine, are anything but indicators of even larger
devastation occurring underfoot. The world needs to wake up.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Photo at top: Jesse Logan in the high winter ramparts outside of Cooke City, Montana. Photo used with permission of Logan.
