This post will begin our segment on the Father of Southern Forestry, Austin Cary, the one for whom Austin Cary Memorial Forest is so named.

It is an attempt to tease apart primary and secondary focuses, almost a kind of “hue” which adds a little extra effort to the already whole, which has already been awared for what it is. Indeed, as one commenter put it, in poetic verses, this blog is equally if not more so concerned with the secondary timbre (in sound) as it is with the second timber.

So it is that, until now, we have not yet addressed the rather ‘lurking’ question of forestry and economics, their apparent separation as distinct practices with differing techniques; and yet, also, their momentary exchanges, which give rise to phenomena such as the aforementioned “Fathering” effect, must be noted and described accurately to give an account of what allowed the rise of Austin Cary, how he was ‘carried’ as it were to such canopic heights, even while lingering in the flatwoods.

How could any one come to be credited with the title of the Father of Forestry in the South, if not through an economic mentality and its procedure? Who could otherwise have the drive to decide in this manner upon forests? And, still more crucially, what could possibly have motivated Austin Cary, if ‘forestry’ were, at least in the South, not yet a codified discipline? His simple love of forests? Perhaps. And yet, here we encounter a certain difficulty. For it is not sufficient, either, to cast Cary as a businessman, in restless search of great financial success.

Such a casting would be premature, at best. And yet, Cary – originally a Northerner – was indeed ‘carried’, as it were, by some indeterminate process, to the top of all things pertaining to Southern Forests, with his ‘memory’ and economic sense of forests apparently enshrined to this day, in the Austin Cary Memorial Forest.

So we turn to considerations of forestry and economics, economic forestry, and also the other way around: the ‘forestry’ of economics.

In observing what is really going on, actually occuring, as it concerns Southern Forestry in the USA, in particular, one certainly notices the usual ‘capitalistic’ procedures which continue to happen, as they do everywhere else. Nothing new, in this regard.

However, at this critical juncture, of forestry and economics, I hold that there is something else entirely at work, overlooked consistently and predictably by even the most well-received of trans-disciplinary ecologists, environmental activists, etc. Environmental activism, here, like peace activism during the Vietnam War, seems to have fallen short, owing in large part to a lack of thought. And today, the “carpet bombs” continue to fall upon Southern Forests, in the flatwoods and their landscapes, albeit in spookier and still more subtler ways.

What “bombs” are dropping, exactly?

One must turn to the ‘forestry’ of economics, and to the figure of Austin Cary in particular, to ‘see’ (more accurately, ‘perceive’) what is now brewing in this flatwood series.

Look for yourself.. I am almost suspicious…