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The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves the only giant golden spruce on earth.
When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest.
When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest.
273 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 17, 2005
812 people are currently reading
14k people want to read
About the author
John Vaillant
23books575followersJohn Vaillant is an author and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and the Guardian, among others. His first book,The Golden Spruce (Norton, 2005), was a bestseller and won several awards, including the Governor General's and Rogers Trust awards for non-fiction (Canada). His second nonfiction book, The Tiger(Knopf, 2010), was an international bestseller, and has been published in 16 languages. Film rights were optioned by Brad Pitt’s film company, Plan B. In 2014 Vaillant won the Windham-Campbell Prize, a global award for non-fiction. In 2015, he published his first work of fiction, The Jaguar's Children (Houghton Mifflin), which was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC and Kirkus Fiction Prizes, and was a finalist for the Writers� Trust Fiction Prize (Canada).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,268 reviews
June 11, 2018
This is one of those books that turns me into THE most annoying wife. I just couldn't help myself, I needed to read the interesting tidbits out loud. A golden spruce AND an albino raven. Trees as heavy as jumbo jets. A seven hour ferry ride to get to these cold weather islands. A first-nations group whose language is not related to any other group. Strong as the Vikings. Etc.
This book was recommended to me by someone who knew I'd be on a ship near the Haida Gwaii. Never heard of whatever that is? Me either. I learned so much about the people, the forest, the ocean, and this one man who decided to chop down a 300 year old rare golden spruce to protest commercial industry in the area. But describing it that way doesn't really do it justice.
This book was recommended to me by someone who knew I'd be on a ship near the Haida Gwaii. Never heard of whatever that is? Me either. I learned so much about the people, the forest, the ocean, and this one man who decided to chop down a 300 year old rare golden spruce to protest commercial industry in the area. But describing it that way doesn't really do it justice.
December 26, 2015
2.5* rounded up.
There comes at last a moment when the pole is centred in its hole, supported only by the people who surround it, that it becomes clear to some what it means to be Haida � and plain to all how many hands it takes to resurrect a tree.
You looked at the star rating, didn't you? Well, there is a reason why this book only got 2.5* off me, but it is nothing to do with the level of interest with which I read this.
Indeed, I have never thought that I ever would read a book about logging and the North American timber industry - and actually finish it.
The Golden Spruce started off great with the disappearance of Grant Hadwin, former logger-turned-environmentalist, which is a mystery that has never been resolved. Hadwin's claim to infamy is that he felled a unique tree - the Golden Spruce - an ancient tree that by mutation developed a golden rather than green colour. A tree that became a local attraction and was revered by the Haida.
In telling this story, Vaillant delivers a detailed history of logging in British Columbia, and the history of the relationship between the coastal First Nations and the settlers. The regional history is told in parallel with Hadwin's own life story - starting with his career as a logger and his growing personal issues with the work:
"Grant was struck by the destructiveness of the logging process. Then only seventeen, he described logging techniques that stripped the mountainsides down to bare rock. ‘Nothing’s going to grow there again,� he told her. This was an unusual thing for a teenager from Vancouver to be concerned about in 1967, especially one with Grant’s lineage. Logging had literally built the city and most people were still connected to the industry � if not directly, then through family members or friends. But things were changing in the sleepy green logging town. Not long after Grant had reported his observations to his aunt on the north side of English Bay, a fledgling organization formed on the south side, just ten kilometres away. They gave themselves a deceptively Canadian name, the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, but this would prove a misnomer, and, in 1970, they would change it � to Greenpeace."
Hadwin's growing concern and developing mental health issues would culminate in his
obsession with the destruction of the natural by the professional classes, and eventually lead to an act of eco-terrorism that had him arrested and charged for the logging the Golden Spruce in 1997. Except, that Hadwin disappeared before he could stand trial.
All in all, I thought this was a fascinating book, not least because the story does not end with Hadwin's disappearance but goes to show that this wanton act of destruction inspired several attempts to recreate the Golden Spruce from shoots which had been taken earlier and the political mine-field that was created by doing so because of the tensions between Haida First Nation attempting to preserve their heritage and the enthusiasts who were trying to recreate the Golden Spruce so it can be grown and exported to willing buyers.
Who'd have known that so much discussion could arise out of the felling of one single tree?
"To get an idea of the scale of logging taking place in the Charlottes during the last thirty years, one need only look as far as the Haida Monarch and the Haida Brave. At the time of their launching in the mid-seventies, they were the world’s largest floating log carriers, and both were built to serve the islands; the Monarch (the larger of the two) is capable of carrying nearly four million board feet of timber (about four hundred truckloads) at a time. When one of these vessels dumps its load at the booming grounds in Vancouver, it can generate a spontaneous wave three metres high."
So, why only 2.5*? I hear you ask: Well, I started reading this book as a paperback but an unfortunate accident involving coffee and a jam doughnut made me switch to the kindle version. I promptly found out that the books were different: the sequence of the chapters did not correspond and even the text within the corresponding chapters did not match. The kindle version read like the paperback had been gone with a chainsaw and then glued back together. Yes the text flowed, but I found myself re-reading parts that I had already worked through.
Which brings me to the second snag - it was hard work reading the book. There is way too much detail about the history of logging - including a short history of the chainsaw and instructions on how to cut down trees. And by "way too" I mean it fine to reveal those details but it distracts from the story if every bit of history introduces new characters which do not add to the story and which are never mentioned again for the rest of the book. No problem if they had been cited in footnoted or endnotes, but trying to force them into the narrative did not work.
I will leave off with a bit of trivia which illustrates the tone of the book - informative, yet, moving:
"PORT CLEMENTS HAS suffered much; not only did the town lose its mascot (the golden spruce is the centrepiece for the town logo), but in November of the same year, its albino raven died in a blinding flash when it was electrocuted on a transformer in front of the Golden Spruce Motel. True albino ravens � as opposed to grey or mottled � are all but unheard of. To get an idea of just how rare these birds are, consider this: Alaska and British Columbia together cover nearly two and a half million square kilometres and contain the continent’s largest populations of ravens, and yet never in the history of bird observation and collection has a true albino ever been reported in Alaska. The Port Clements specimen is the only one ever to have been observed in British Columbia (it has since been stuffed and is now on display in the town’s logging museum)."
There comes at last a moment when the pole is centred in its hole, supported only by the people who surround it, that it becomes clear to some what it means to be Haida � and plain to all how many hands it takes to resurrect a tree.
You looked at the star rating, didn't you? Well, there is a reason why this book only got 2.5* off me, but it is nothing to do with the level of interest with which I read this.
Indeed, I have never thought that I ever would read a book about logging and the North American timber industry - and actually finish it.
The Golden Spruce started off great with the disappearance of Grant Hadwin, former logger-turned-environmentalist, which is a mystery that has never been resolved. Hadwin's claim to infamy is that he felled a unique tree - the Golden Spruce - an ancient tree that by mutation developed a golden rather than green colour. A tree that became a local attraction and was revered by the Haida.
In telling this story, Vaillant delivers a detailed history of logging in British Columbia, and the history of the relationship between the coastal First Nations and the settlers. The regional history is told in parallel with Hadwin's own life story - starting with his career as a logger and his growing personal issues with the work:
"Grant was struck by the destructiveness of the logging process. Then only seventeen, he described logging techniques that stripped the mountainsides down to bare rock. ‘Nothing’s going to grow there again,� he told her. This was an unusual thing for a teenager from Vancouver to be concerned about in 1967, especially one with Grant’s lineage. Logging had literally built the city and most people were still connected to the industry � if not directly, then through family members or friends. But things were changing in the sleepy green logging town. Not long after Grant had reported his observations to his aunt on the north side of English Bay, a fledgling organization formed on the south side, just ten kilometres away. They gave themselves a deceptively Canadian name, the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, but this would prove a misnomer, and, in 1970, they would change it � to Greenpeace."
Hadwin's growing concern and developing mental health issues would culminate in his
obsession with the destruction of the natural by the professional classes, and eventually lead to an act of eco-terrorism that had him arrested and charged for the logging the Golden Spruce in 1997. Except, that Hadwin disappeared before he could stand trial.
All in all, I thought this was a fascinating book, not least because the story does not end with Hadwin's disappearance but goes to show that this wanton act of destruction inspired several attempts to recreate the Golden Spruce from shoots which had been taken earlier and the political mine-field that was created by doing so because of the tensions between Haida First Nation attempting to preserve their heritage and the enthusiasts who were trying to recreate the Golden Spruce so it can be grown and exported to willing buyers.
Who'd have known that so much discussion could arise out of the felling of one single tree?
"To get an idea of the scale of logging taking place in the Charlottes during the last thirty years, one need only look as far as the Haida Monarch and the Haida Brave. At the time of their launching in the mid-seventies, they were the world’s largest floating log carriers, and both were built to serve the islands; the Monarch (the larger of the two) is capable of carrying nearly four million board feet of timber (about four hundred truckloads) at a time. When one of these vessels dumps its load at the booming grounds in Vancouver, it can generate a spontaneous wave three metres high."
So, why only 2.5*? I hear you ask: Well, I started reading this book as a paperback but an unfortunate accident involving coffee and a jam doughnut made me switch to the kindle version. I promptly found out that the books were different: the sequence of the chapters did not correspond and even the text within the corresponding chapters did not match. The kindle version read like the paperback had been gone with a chainsaw and then glued back together. Yes the text flowed, but I found myself re-reading parts that I had already worked through.
Which brings me to the second snag - it was hard work reading the book. There is way too much detail about the history of logging - including a short history of the chainsaw and instructions on how to cut down trees. And by "way too" I mean it fine to reveal those details but it distracts from the story if every bit of history introduces new characters which do not add to the story and which are never mentioned again for the rest of the book. No problem if they had been cited in footnoted or endnotes, but trying to force them into the narrative did not work.
I will leave off with a bit of trivia which illustrates the tone of the book - informative, yet, moving:
"PORT CLEMENTS HAS suffered much; not only did the town lose its mascot (the golden spruce is the centrepiece for the town logo), but in November of the same year, its albino raven died in a blinding flash when it was electrocuted on a transformer in front of the Golden Spruce Motel. True albino ravens � as opposed to grey or mottled � are all but unheard of. To get an idea of just how rare these birds are, consider this: Alaska and British Columbia together cover nearly two and a half million square kilometres and contain the continent’s largest populations of ravens, and yet never in the history of bird observation and collection has a true albino ever been reported in Alaska. The Port Clements specimen is the only one ever to have been observed in British Columbia (it has since been stuffed and is now on display in the town’s logging museum)."
January 31, 2020
Look at this beautiful Golden Spruce:
ETA: Check out National Geographic's article on the Haida (Vol 172, NO.1, July 1987)
Anyone interested in forest conservation should read this book. It is informative and clear. You will learn about the timber industry. Maybe that sounds dry, but the book is in no way dry. Why? That is because the author couples it with a true event concerning the chopping down of the tree shown above and the disappearance of the man who chopped it down, Grant Hadwin in January 1997. Why did he do it? Was it right to do it? The latter has certainly been debated! And is he still alive? Moreover, this magnificent tree was an essential part of the Haida culture. The Haida are a First Nation tribe living primarily on coastal British Colombia, Canada, many on the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii). Their culture and traditions are also covered in this book. All of these different topics are interwoven and engagingly told.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini. He did a great job. He never puts you to sleep. Both the text and the narration are engaging.
I pulled out a map of the northwestern coastline of British Colombia, the Charlotte Islands and the Hecate Strait. When you hear of the virulence of this stretch of water you are drawn to find it and place it on a map.
What makes this book good is how it covers an exciting, true event, history and conservation.
ETA: Check out National Geographic's article on the Haida (Vol 172, NO.1, July 1987)
Anyone interested in forest conservation should read this book. It is informative and clear. You will learn about the timber industry. Maybe that sounds dry, but the book is in no way dry. Why? That is because the author couples it with a true event concerning the chopping down of the tree shown above and the disappearance of the man who chopped it down, Grant Hadwin in January 1997. Why did he do it? Was it right to do it? The latter has certainly been debated! And is he still alive? Moreover, this magnificent tree was an essential part of the Haida culture. The Haida are a First Nation tribe living primarily on coastal British Colombia, Canada, many on the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii). Their culture and traditions are also covered in this book. All of these different topics are interwoven and engagingly told.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini. He did a great job. He never puts you to sleep. Both the text and the narration are engaging.
I pulled out a map of the northwestern coastline of British Colombia, the Charlotte Islands and the Hecate Strait. When you hear of the virulence of this stretch of water you are drawn to find it and place it on a map.
What makes this book good is how it covers an exciting, true event, history and conservation.
June 2, 2009
Have to admit that I picked it up because of the hunky guy coming out of the water on the book's cover. And it's about trees. How could that be bad?
Took this on a long work trip and couldn't put it down. In many ways it's utterly depressing as the author pours through the history of how humans have decimated the world's forests, native cultures, and other natural resources...but the author crafts an unforgettable story of life among the wild Pacific Northwest coastal forests...from native coastal tribes to 200 years worth of logging history. Regarding the trees he also thoroughly researches aspects of forestry, logging, botany, druidism, and ecology to make anyone go out and hug their nearest tree. As for the hunky guy...the author also weaves his life, ecoterrorist act, and mysterious disappearance into this thoroughly engaging account of humans' interaction with their natural world and the rare, magical gifts that come around once in a few lifetimes.
Being from the PNW I readily absorbed the topic and identified with the shocking swaths of clearcuts that abound in this area and with what it would take to save what's left of our precious ecological niche.
Took this on a long work trip and couldn't put it down. In many ways it's utterly depressing as the author pours through the history of how humans have decimated the world's forests, native cultures, and other natural resources...but the author crafts an unforgettable story of life among the wild Pacific Northwest coastal forests...from native coastal tribes to 200 years worth of logging history. Regarding the trees he also thoroughly researches aspects of forestry, logging, botany, druidism, and ecology to make anyone go out and hug their nearest tree. As for the hunky guy...the author also weaves his life, ecoterrorist act, and mysterious disappearance into this thoroughly engaging account of humans' interaction with their natural world and the rare, magical gifts that come around once in a few lifetimes.
Being from the PNW I readily absorbed the topic and identified with the shocking swaths of clearcuts that abound in this area and with what it would take to save what's left of our precious ecological niche.
January 19, 2020
4� 🌲 🌲 🌲 🌲
“Eight hundred years to grow, and twenty-five minutes to put on the ground. It’s sad, but it’s a living.� —veteran B.C. logger
“Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees . . . to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilization.� —Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929
Following my favorite book of 2019, , this surprise page turner sawed into the ventricles of my heart and rendered it into pulp. It was not lost on me that those pages were made from that same by-product.
This is the combined history of the Haida First Nation people who called the land home, the logging industry, and the destruction of old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, particularly one singularly unique and sacred Sitka spruce, sacrificed by one man wanting to call attention to wanton clear cutting before it was too late to save any of it.
“Upset about the Golden Spruce? Re-examine your perspective, . . . we tend to focus on the individual trees while the rest of the forests are being slaughtered . . . When society places so much value on one mutant tree and ignores what happens to the rest of the forest, it’s not the person who points this out who should be labeled.� —Grant Hadwin
“He wasn’t irrational, he wasn’t suicidal, but I could tell he was a few fries short of a Happy Meal.� Constable Bruce Jeffrey
Vaillant weaves it all together in the most interesting and skilled fashion. As author wrote, “Heroic and sad . . . in such a powerful way.�
“Eight hundred years to grow, and twenty-five minutes to put on the ground. It’s sad, but it’s a living.� —veteran B.C. logger
“Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees . . . to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilization.� —Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929
Following my favorite book of 2019, , this surprise page turner sawed into the ventricles of my heart and rendered it into pulp. It was not lost on me that those pages were made from that same by-product.
This is the combined history of the Haida First Nation people who called the land home, the logging industry, and the destruction of old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, particularly one singularly unique and sacred Sitka spruce, sacrificed by one man wanting to call attention to wanton clear cutting before it was too late to save any of it.
“Upset about the Golden Spruce? Re-examine your perspective, . . . we tend to focus on the individual trees while the rest of the forests are being slaughtered . . . When society places so much value on one mutant tree and ignores what happens to the rest of the forest, it’s not the person who points this out who should be labeled.� —Grant Hadwin
“He wasn’t irrational, he wasn’t suicidal, but I could tell he was a few fries short of a Happy Meal.� Constable Bruce Jeffrey
Vaillant weaves it all together in the most interesting and skilled fashion. As author wrote, “Heroic and sad . . . in such a powerful way.�
February 11, 2021
Surrounding a specific event, this book not only depicts a very interesting history of Haida Gwaii (formally Queen Charlotte Islands) that is well rounded with applicable tangents, but also presents such in an insightful and balanced way. It is much more than is presented in our blinkered culture's instruction. Yet another example of how our evolutionary baggage is leading us on a self-destructive course.
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.� ~ Chris Maser
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.� ~ Chris Maser
September 27, 2015
Author John Vaillant portrays the unique ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest Coast with powerful images. The watery element is emphasized in the region's technical name, the Very Wet Hypermarine Subzone. The wetness comes not only from the pocket of moist air walled by a spine of coastal mountain ranges, but from the abrupt fluctuation in sea depth at the lip of the continental shelf. Tides are so high they blur the distinction between land and sea. Vaillant's most lyrical passages describe the combination of earth and water where ancient old growth forests of gigantic Douglas fir, Sitka spruce and Western red cedar have flourished for centuries.
These are not sun dappled sylvan playgrounds. They resemble instead the dense frightening darkness that haunted the imaginations of the brothers Grimm. �...for a stranger it is not a particularly comfortable place to be. You can be twenty paces from a road or a beach and become totally disoriented; once inside, there is no future and no past, only the sodden, twilit now....every fifth feet or so, your way is blocked by moss-covered walls of fallen trees that may be taller than you and hundreds of feet long....You have the feeling that if you stay for too long, you will simply be grown over and absorbed by the slow and ancient riot of growth going on all around you. It can be suffocating, and the need to see the sun can become overpowering � something you could do easily if it weren't for all those trees.�
It is easy to imagine the urge to clear those forests � to civilize the land. That is what generations of humans have done whenever the natural balance could be tipped. Enter greed. After the bounty of fur-bearing animals had been decimated, economic imperatives targeted the forests. The forests were so vast, no one imagined they could ever be depleted. Vaillant ascribes an almost heroic quality to the earliest foresters, for whom the work was dangerous. It demanded unique skills acquired over a lifetime. The Haida cut trees for their huge war canoes; the Nor'westerners came to supply shipbuilders and homesteaders on the other side of the continent. Ironically, only those most intimate with the forest were skilled enough to destroy it. The activity was connected to a strong sense of pride and love for the outdoors, as well as an increasing monetary incentive. As forests were destroyed a few reluctantly recognized the contradiction. Al Wanderer, a 2nd generation logger admitted: “We basically gutted the place....I've made a good living...but sometimes you wonder if it's all worth it.� Earl Einerson, a lifelong faller declared: “I love this job...It's a challenge to walk into a mess like this and get it looking civilized....Another reason I like falling ...is I like walking around in old-growth forests. It's kind of an oxymoron, I guess � to like something and then go out and kill it.�
The tipping point for deforestation came in the 1980's. Steam donkeys (machines for hauling logs) gave way to diesel machines and power saws. The technology had created a vicious cycle. As accessible trees disappeared more expensive machinery was needed. Clear-cutting resulted from the need for higher productivity required to produce a return on investment. Evans Wood was an example of the new business model. Decisions and money flowed from a distant corporate office. The actual work was done by contract labor. Some of that labor was local, but much of it would move on when the trees were gone. As always, money guided local political decisions.
All of this is background for the main narrative: The madman, a former lumber man named Grant Hadwin, and the Golden Spruce, a Sitka spruce anomaly. The tree was around 300 years old in 1997; the lifespan of the species is estimated to be as much as 800 years. The tree was special. Its needles were yellow, golden in the reflected sun. Normally, this would indicate a disruption of photosynthesis, a death sentence, but the tree was huge and flourishing. It grew in a perfect conical shape whereas most Sitka spruce appear bushy and unkempt. The tree was unique in one more way. It was sterile. Its seeds would never sprout. It grew in the Yakoan River Valley on remote Queen Charlotte Island, home of the Haida. They named it K'iid K'iyaas or Elder Spruce Tree, and it figured in their myths. One story was that once there were two golden spruces. The female died and the male which was sterile remained. Another was that a boy disobeyed and looked back at his burning village and was changed into the tree. By 1997 the Golden Spruce had become a local attraction. It was surrounded by a stand of tall trees and protected by the Macmillan Bloedel Co. (the lumber company that absorbed Evans Wood).
Grant Hadwin was an expert timberman. He surveyed and carved out log-cutting roads and was considered the best in the business. He also viewed the rapid deforestation with increasing concern. In 1987 that concern morphed into a messianic obsession. In the following decade his life fell apart as his passion grew. He was particularly angered that timber companies like Macmillan Bloedel could point to the Golden Spruce and other scenic protected areas, miniscule parcels of only five or ten acres, as evidence of environmental concern and responsibility. His rage boiled over into bio-terrorism: He cut down the legendary Golden Spruce, intending it as a symbolic wake-up call to what had been lost.
Vaillant is a dramatic storyteller, and his narrative is not chronological. Some readers may have difficulty reconciling the history of the lumbering industry with Grant Hadwin's personal timeline. Some of the narrative is tedious. There are long passages that deal with the technicalities of big tree cutting. The questions he asks, however, are thought-provoking. Why is it important to save these forests? The appeal of old growth forest is spiritual and emotional. Trees that took hundreds of years to grow cast a sacred aura in our imaginations. There is sadness at losing something that can never be replaced. There is also an aesthetic appeal. A swathe of clear-cut blights the land like a scar. At the same time, few of us would willingly live in these forests. Even fewer would manage to survive. There are long-term consequences to deforestation, of course, that bolster rational arguments. Deforestation removes a critical guardian of the land. Without their roots the thin soil will erode. Without the surrounding protection from the wind, the entire forest will recede over time. Cut down the trees and the angles of sunlight so carefully calibrated by the surrounding stands will be disrupted, ultimately changing the internal climate of the forest ecosystem.
The Haida are perhaps the strongest allies of the forest, not because of some harmony with nature but because this is their homeland and they can conceptualize the forest as part of a historical and cultural patrimony. It's decline parallels their own history of population decline from disease and forced acculturation. How can mainstream American culture counter its rootless and self-serving inclinations? Vaillant concludes hopefully, “Growing at a rate somewhere between stalagmites and human beings, forests can serve as a kind of long-term memory bank, revealing things about our environment, and even ourselves, that only our great-great-grandparents could have told us.�
NOTES:
Informative maps can be found on
and on Tim Whelan's sailing blog
A series of 17 blankets depict present day Native American artist Hazel Wilson's reinterpretation of the Golden Spruce myth.
These are not sun dappled sylvan playgrounds. They resemble instead the dense frightening darkness that haunted the imaginations of the brothers Grimm. �...for a stranger it is not a particularly comfortable place to be. You can be twenty paces from a road or a beach and become totally disoriented; once inside, there is no future and no past, only the sodden, twilit now....every fifth feet or so, your way is blocked by moss-covered walls of fallen trees that may be taller than you and hundreds of feet long....You have the feeling that if you stay for too long, you will simply be grown over and absorbed by the slow and ancient riot of growth going on all around you. It can be suffocating, and the need to see the sun can become overpowering � something you could do easily if it weren't for all those trees.�
It is easy to imagine the urge to clear those forests � to civilize the land. That is what generations of humans have done whenever the natural balance could be tipped. Enter greed. After the bounty of fur-bearing animals had been decimated, economic imperatives targeted the forests. The forests were so vast, no one imagined they could ever be depleted. Vaillant ascribes an almost heroic quality to the earliest foresters, for whom the work was dangerous. It demanded unique skills acquired over a lifetime. The Haida cut trees for their huge war canoes; the Nor'westerners came to supply shipbuilders and homesteaders on the other side of the continent. Ironically, only those most intimate with the forest were skilled enough to destroy it. The activity was connected to a strong sense of pride and love for the outdoors, as well as an increasing monetary incentive. As forests were destroyed a few reluctantly recognized the contradiction. Al Wanderer, a 2nd generation logger admitted: “We basically gutted the place....I've made a good living...but sometimes you wonder if it's all worth it.� Earl Einerson, a lifelong faller declared: “I love this job...It's a challenge to walk into a mess like this and get it looking civilized....Another reason I like falling ...is I like walking around in old-growth forests. It's kind of an oxymoron, I guess � to like something and then go out and kill it.�
The tipping point for deforestation came in the 1980's. Steam donkeys (machines for hauling logs) gave way to diesel machines and power saws. The technology had created a vicious cycle. As accessible trees disappeared more expensive machinery was needed. Clear-cutting resulted from the need for higher productivity required to produce a return on investment. Evans Wood was an example of the new business model. Decisions and money flowed from a distant corporate office. The actual work was done by contract labor. Some of that labor was local, but much of it would move on when the trees were gone. As always, money guided local political decisions.
All of this is background for the main narrative: The madman, a former lumber man named Grant Hadwin, and the Golden Spruce, a Sitka spruce anomaly. The tree was around 300 years old in 1997; the lifespan of the species is estimated to be as much as 800 years. The tree was special. Its needles were yellow, golden in the reflected sun. Normally, this would indicate a disruption of photosynthesis, a death sentence, but the tree was huge and flourishing. It grew in a perfect conical shape whereas most Sitka spruce appear bushy and unkempt. The tree was unique in one more way. It was sterile. Its seeds would never sprout. It grew in the Yakoan River Valley on remote Queen Charlotte Island, home of the Haida. They named it K'iid K'iyaas or Elder Spruce Tree, and it figured in their myths. One story was that once there were two golden spruces. The female died and the male which was sterile remained. Another was that a boy disobeyed and looked back at his burning village and was changed into the tree. By 1997 the Golden Spruce had become a local attraction. It was surrounded by a stand of tall trees and protected by the Macmillan Bloedel Co. (the lumber company that absorbed Evans Wood).
Grant Hadwin was an expert timberman. He surveyed and carved out log-cutting roads and was considered the best in the business. He also viewed the rapid deforestation with increasing concern. In 1987 that concern morphed into a messianic obsession. In the following decade his life fell apart as his passion grew. He was particularly angered that timber companies like Macmillan Bloedel could point to the Golden Spruce and other scenic protected areas, miniscule parcels of only five or ten acres, as evidence of environmental concern and responsibility. His rage boiled over into bio-terrorism: He cut down the legendary Golden Spruce, intending it as a symbolic wake-up call to what had been lost.
Vaillant is a dramatic storyteller, and his narrative is not chronological. Some readers may have difficulty reconciling the history of the lumbering industry with Grant Hadwin's personal timeline. Some of the narrative is tedious. There are long passages that deal with the technicalities of big tree cutting. The questions he asks, however, are thought-provoking. Why is it important to save these forests? The appeal of old growth forest is spiritual and emotional. Trees that took hundreds of years to grow cast a sacred aura in our imaginations. There is sadness at losing something that can never be replaced. There is also an aesthetic appeal. A swathe of clear-cut blights the land like a scar. At the same time, few of us would willingly live in these forests. Even fewer would manage to survive. There are long-term consequences to deforestation, of course, that bolster rational arguments. Deforestation removes a critical guardian of the land. Without their roots the thin soil will erode. Without the surrounding protection from the wind, the entire forest will recede over time. Cut down the trees and the angles of sunlight so carefully calibrated by the surrounding stands will be disrupted, ultimately changing the internal climate of the forest ecosystem.
The Haida are perhaps the strongest allies of the forest, not because of some harmony with nature but because this is their homeland and they can conceptualize the forest as part of a historical and cultural patrimony. It's decline parallels their own history of population decline from disease and forced acculturation. How can mainstream American culture counter its rootless and self-serving inclinations? Vaillant concludes hopefully, “Growing at a rate somewhere between stalagmites and human beings, forests can serve as a kind of long-term memory bank, revealing things about our environment, and even ourselves, that only our great-great-grandparents could have told us.�
NOTES:
Informative maps can be found on
and on Tim Whelan's sailing blog
A series of 17 blankets depict present day Native American artist Hazel Wilson's reinterpretation of the Golden Spruce myth.
March 12, 2008
There's a lot of interesting information in this book, and I enjoyed that aspect of it, but the author would have benefited from someone reigning him in a bit. He sort of wrote a small book about the early trading that took place along the coast of the Pacific Northwest, and then one about the natural landscape and flora in that region, and then one about the guy whom the book is ostensibly about. Almost all of which was new and intriguing info for me, but I feel like there was too much shifting of gears. I think the author has contributed to several magazines, so maybe he just needs more practice at book-length projects.
March 24, 2023
Unless a tree is particularly large, or unusually shaped, it will not stand out as an individual, and unless it is isolated from its mates, it will seldom announce itself from a distance. But despite being embedded in a forest of similarly large trees, the tree that came to be known as the golden spruce was an exception on both counts. From the ground, its startling colour stopped people dead in their tracks; from the air, it stood out like a beacon and was visible from miles away. Like much of the surrounding landscape, the tree was incorporated into the Haida’s vast repertoire of stories, but as far as anyone knows, it is the only tree, in what was then an infinity of trees, ever to be given a name by the Haida people. They called it K’iid K’iyaas: Elder Spruce Tree. According to legend, it was a human being who had been transformed.
I read an early copy of the upcoming (2023) rerelease of with a new afterword from author John Vaillant (wherein he cringes at some of his outdated language and attitudes in the original release and gives updates on Grant Hadwin � the man at the centre of the book’s mystery � and on the Haida people’s quest for self-government on the unceded territory of Haida Gwaii). This is my favourite type of narrative nonfiction: a central mystery explored through a deep dive into the history, geography, botany, sociology, and politics of a region, extrapolated into a lesson for people everywhere. For those who don’t know: On January 20th, 1997, logging surveyor and renowned outdoorsman Grant Hadwin swam across a freezing river in order to surreptitiously compromise a centuries-old Sitka spruce � a magical mutant whose unlikely golden needles were integral to the local tourism industry and sacred to area First Nation peoples � and after it toppled, he then disappeared while supposedly travelling to his day in court to answer for his act. Vaillant explores the history of the Haida people � from precontact with Europeans to today � the history of the logging industry, the unusual and harsh geography of British Columbia’s coast and offshore islands, and interspersed with it all, the story of how one man became jaded with the logging industry and decided to make a hugely controversial statement by felling a sacred tree. Meticulously detailed and compellingly written in engaging prose, with a message on moral and cognitive compromise that should resonate with every reader, this is exactly to my taste and satisfaction; rounding up to five stars.
From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, it is hard to say who was more inebriated by greed: the Europeans who were seeing profits in the hundreds of percent, or the Natives who were suddenly able to leapfrog their way to the top of the social hierarchy and put on spectacles of largesse hitherto unimaginable by any potlatch host on the coast. So eager were the Natives to get their hands on the traders� various technological marvels that a man would readily sell the otter cloak off his wife’s back and, on occasion, her back as well. And so desperate were the Iron Men to acquire these skins that they would trade away virtually anything that wasn’t crucial to the journey home; this included Native slaves from down the coast, firearms, silverware, door keys, and the sailors� own clothing. These were boom times for all concerned, a rapacious festival of unrestrained capitalism.`
The Haida people were long known as fearsome warriors � travelling up and down the coast in massive dugout canoes; raiding, looting, and enslaving other peoples � and when they first made contact with Europeans, they were fiercely savvy in the rules of trade and bargaining. Due to an incredibly profitable Chinese market for otter skins, a mutually advantageous partnership arose between European traders and the Haida people � in which the Europeans risked the perilous journey around the southern tip of South America in order to get to the west coast of Canada and traded iron goods and weapons for a seemingly unending supply of otter skins � but despite sea otters originally numbering in the millions, they soon became extirpated from much of their range and the market collapsed; leaving the Haida people vulnerable to exploitation when the Europeans, and then the North Americans, set their sights on the inland trees that the Haida had no immediate need for. As Vaillant notes, the otter trade “set the tone for every extraction industry that has come after�; unrestrained capitalism extracts to the last drop, but even the greedy logging companies knew to leave the famous golden spruce alone.
Meanwhile, Grant Hadwin grew in his career as a talented logging scout: with an uncanny ability to survey access roads into hard-to-reach areas, and an aptitude for backwoods survival in harsh conditions, Hadwin both dearly loved the old growth forests of Haida Gwaii and contributed much to their destruction. He also suffered from mental illness (his brother did not survive his battle with schizophrenia), and after experiencing a mystical epiphany in the woods, Hadwin started firing off Unabomber-type anti-society screeds to the media and logging outfits. Ultimately, he seemed to believe that chopping down the famous golden spruce (which he apparently didn’t know was sacred to the Haida) would draw attention to the evils of the logging industry:
“When society places so much value on one mutant tree and ignores what happens to the rest of the forest, it’s not the person who points this out who should be labelled,� Hadwin told a Prince Rupert reporter who questioned his sanity. In the short term at least, the collective reaction to the loss of the golden spruce ended up proving his point: that people fail to see the forest for the tree.
The Golden Spruce ends with the fruitless search for the missing Hadwin, the (unsanctioned by the Haida) efforts to clone and market copies of the fallen mutant tree, and a survey of modern-day loggers who acknowledge the permanent damage they are doing while being unwilling to walk away from their big paychecks (Vaillant compares this to stockbrokers, soldiers, and slaughterhouse workers: people who insulate us from the dirty work that support our lives; the unspoken “moral and cognitive dissonance� that allow us to succeed and function in this world). And although he states that First Nations� stories are considered “owned� by their tellers, and would never be shared by someone outside their community, Vaillant gives us a couple of versions of the Haida’s tale of the golden spruce in order to conclude:
At the root of the golden spruce story is a very simple message: respect your elders, or you’ll be sorry. However, beneath this surface layer of meaning, the parable could also be read as a lesson on how to survive the loss of one’s entire village to massacre, how to weather a stint in residential school: don’t look back; don’t try to return to that dead place. But everyone in a position to deny or confirm this, or any other theory, is dead. Like the tree and the man who cut it down, the story is a puzzle or, more accurately, a piece of a puzzle, the whole of which can never be fully known.
The tale of the golden spruce is still a puzzle to this day, but it’s an intriguing story and I am happy to have finally read Vaillant’s multidisciplinary approach to it. Happier still to have read an updated version, twenty-five years after the initial destruction of this magical mutant tree.
November 24, 2012
The story revolves around Grant Hadwin, an expert Canadian logger turned environmentalist, and his seemingly incomprehensible and barbaric act of cutting down an old, beautiful and one of a kind mutant spruce tree with golden needles called the Golden Spruce.
Hadwin surreptitiously cut down the Golden Spruce one cold January night in 1997 and fled in the wake of his act never to be seen again. The tree was ancient and huge, over 300 years old, 50 meters tall and sacred to the Haida, the native people of Haida Gwaii, the native name for the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada. His determination was so great that he single-handedly cut down the tree whose trunk measured two meters in diameter. Even though the act in itself is absolutely abhorrent, Vaillant is trying to show that Hadwin’s outrage might have been grounded in some reasons that were far from crazy.
It so happened that the Golden Spruce was also a showpiece of MacMillan Bloedel, the biggest Canadian multinational wood products company. The company had an exclusive contract for logging on the islands, and was cutting the old growth there for years with absolute abandon and no consideration for the forests or the people. It was this latter fact that attracted Hadwin’s attention to the tree. In an open letter he said that ‘we tend to focus on the individual trees like the Golden Spruce while the rest of the forests are being slaughtered�.
As a life long logger, Hadwin witnessed more than his share of the mindless forest destruction in British Columbia, and it seems that one day he simply couldn’t take it anymore. Using Hadwin’s story as a lead, Vaillant examines the centuries long West Coast logging greed and lack of consideration for the native people or nature. Unfortunately, nothing has changed since the publication of the book, or Hadwin’s act. The logging of the old growth forest is still going on with the same greedy abandon despite the fact that very little of it remains. Soon there will be none to speak of.
It’s a well-written book with a wealth of information on West Coast woods, history of trade, the natives who live there, the use of wood and the natural history of the region. Spiritually, it goes well with Diamond’s Collapse. It’s good to even for a moment give some thought to Diamond’s theory of the end of civilization on Eastern Island in that context, even though the theory is now disputed.
Hadwin surreptitiously cut down the Golden Spruce one cold January night in 1997 and fled in the wake of his act never to be seen again. The tree was ancient and huge, over 300 years old, 50 meters tall and sacred to the Haida, the native people of Haida Gwaii, the native name for the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada. His determination was so great that he single-handedly cut down the tree whose trunk measured two meters in diameter. Even though the act in itself is absolutely abhorrent, Vaillant is trying to show that Hadwin’s outrage might have been grounded in some reasons that were far from crazy.
It so happened that the Golden Spruce was also a showpiece of MacMillan Bloedel, the biggest Canadian multinational wood products company. The company had an exclusive contract for logging on the islands, and was cutting the old growth there for years with absolute abandon and no consideration for the forests or the people. It was this latter fact that attracted Hadwin’s attention to the tree. In an open letter he said that ‘we tend to focus on the individual trees like the Golden Spruce while the rest of the forests are being slaughtered�.
As a life long logger, Hadwin witnessed more than his share of the mindless forest destruction in British Columbia, and it seems that one day he simply couldn’t take it anymore. Using Hadwin’s story as a lead, Vaillant examines the centuries long West Coast logging greed and lack of consideration for the native people or nature. Unfortunately, nothing has changed since the publication of the book, or Hadwin’s act. The logging of the old growth forest is still going on with the same greedy abandon despite the fact that very little of it remains. Soon there will be none to speak of.
It’s a well-written book with a wealth of information on West Coast woods, history of trade, the natives who live there, the use of wood and the natural history of the region. Spiritually, it goes well with Diamond’s Collapse. It’s good to even for a moment give some thought to Diamond’s theory of the end of civilization on Eastern Island in that context, even though the theory is now disputed.
January 6, 2019
The golden spruce was a tall tree venerated by the Haida, a Canadian First Nation tribe living on the Queen Charlotte Islands. The shimmering golden color was formed by a genetic mutation. This 300 year old Sitka Spruce thrived because reflected light from the water of the Yukoun River reached its inner green needles, allowing photosynthesis to occur. The book centers on Grant Hadwin chopping down this mythical tree in the dead of night in 1997. Hadwin was an expert logger who had a psychotic mystical experience which turned him to environmentalism. He was protesting the clear cut logging practices of the large logging companies which were turning the coastal areas of British Columbia into a wasteland of stumps and landslides. The golden spruce was located on land owned by a logging company. Hadwin, a fit survivalist, disappeared a few days before he was supposed to stand trial.
The book goes into the interesting culture and history of the Haida tribe, as well as their dealings with the early Western traders who decimated the otter population in the Pacific Northwest. It also tells about the history of logging in the region, including the techniques used to fell the giant trees in the old growth forests. Death was a constant companion for the loggers. The spruce in the region was especially valuable for building light flexible airplanes in World War I.
The history of the Pacific Northwest shows overuse of natural resources--otters, seals, and giant trees--for profit, not thinking about the environmental effects and future generations. Activist Grant Hadwin had an important message, but his act of eco-vandalism delivered it the wrong way. Readers interested in the environment and First Nation tribes will especially enjoy this book.
The book goes into the interesting culture and history of the Haida tribe, as well as their dealings with the early Western traders who decimated the otter population in the Pacific Northwest. It also tells about the history of logging in the region, including the techniques used to fell the giant trees in the old growth forests. Death was a constant companion for the loggers. The spruce in the region was especially valuable for building light flexible airplanes in World War I.
The history of the Pacific Northwest shows overuse of natural resources--otters, seals, and giant trees--for profit, not thinking about the environmental effects and future generations. Activist Grant Hadwin had an important message, but his act of eco-vandalism delivered it the wrong way. Readers interested in the environment and First Nation tribes will especially enjoy this book.
April 22, 2022
I love books like this. Stories about man vs. nature. In this case, on one level is “social� man, in the form of the logging companies attempting to harvest as many old growth trees as is possible (and it’s always more and more possible, given technological advances), regardless of the effects on the natural world and local cultures. And on another level is “individual� man, overcoming the physical challenges presented by living and working in the challenging environments where these trees grow.
Vaillant is a superb storyteller. His story starts before Europeans arrived in this part of the world (the North Pacific coast, specifically British Columbia) and builds inexorably. From the opening pages, while communicating facts about the natural world and the history of the area in a factual manner, he nevertheless manages to convey an undercurrent of menace. For thousands of years the Haida Gwaii (aka Queen Charlotte) islands, rich in wildlife, supported a dynamic indigenous population, a culture of fierce warriors, skilled canoers, and gifted carvers. They, like their forests, were dominant until those sailing ships arrived and the downward spiral began.
That feeling of unease climaxes with the actions of Grant Hadwin, a man from a wealthy Vancouver family who went from prep school to logger to environmentalist. An unusual combination of superb athleticism, intellectual acuity, and mental health disorders, Hadwin undertook a spectacular act of vandalism in an effort to call attention to the negative effects of logging. In the immediate moment his act was a disaster, although it may have resulted, indirectly, in positive long term changes.
For those listeners out there - actor Eduardo Ballerini’s narration was brilliant, capturing the cadence of Vaillant’s sentences perfectly.
Vaillant is a superb storyteller. His story starts before Europeans arrived in this part of the world (the North Pacific coast, specifically British Columbia) and builds inexorably. From the opening pages, while communicating facts about the natural world and the history of the area in a factual manner, he nevertheless manages to convey an undercurrent of menace. For thousands of years the Haida Gwaii (aka Queen Charlotte) islands, rich in wildlife, supported a dynamic indigenous population, a culture of fierce warriors, skilled canoers, and gifted carvers. They, like their forests, were dominant until those sailing ships arrived and the downward spiral began.
That feeling of unease climaxes with the actions of Grant Hadwin, a man from a wealthy Vancouver family who went from prep school to logger to environmentalist. An unusual combination of superb athleticism, intellectual acuity, and mental health disorders, Hadwin undertook a spectacular act of vandalism in an effort to call attention to the negative effects of logging. In the immediate moment his act was a disaster, although it may have resulted, indirectly, in positive long term changes.
For those listeners out there - actor Eduardo Ballerini’s narration was brilliant, capturing the cadence of Vaillant’s sentences perfectly.
November 7, 2014
A book about trees and you'll be surprised about how much you don't know about trees. We use tree products everyday without thinking of where those products came from.
A lot of trees have been destroyed in the past in the name of civilization.
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed tells of the life and death of that tree, which was cut down in 1997 by a disillusioned former logger. Like nonfiction writers John MacPhee or Jon Krakauer, Vaillant weaves facts into a compelling tapestry, with rich, layered prose, a fine eye for detail and a solid central theme he builds like a sturdy wood cabin. The Golden Spruce is a meditation on what the spruce itself meant, and a springboard for him to look at the conflict between man and nature in the Northwest.
Vaillant meanders a lot in his chronicle � the golden spruce disappears from the book for whole chapters at a time � but who can fault him when the digressions are as interesting as they are here? And they all relate back to the book’s central theme: the inherent tension between man and nature in this part of the country.
We learn the history of the Haida Indian tribe of the Queen Charlottes, who revered the golden spruce and were devastated by its destruction. We also get capsule histories of Northwest exploration dating back to the days of Captain Cook, and a detailed portrait of logging in the Northwest.
But perhaps most strikingly, Vaillant tracks down the sad tale of Grant Hadwin, who killed the golden spruce. Hadwin is like a character spliced together from Jack London and Edward Abbey books, with a dash of Hunter S. Thompson � from a wealthy Vancouver, B.C. family, he grew up to become a rugged outdoorsman, a logger legendary for his stamina and his fierce individualism.
Not a team player, Hadwin still managed to make a solid living working for logging companies. But as time passed, he grew more and more disturbed by what he saw as a greedy corporate mentality taking over the woods, and particularly the spectacle of clear-cutting. He became erratic and radical � some think he was suffering from mental illness.
One cold night in January 1997 on the Queen Charlotte Islands, Hadwin strapped a chain saw to his back, swam across an icy river to where the golden spruce grew � and cut it down. He meant it as a statement. A rambling letter he sent to area newspapers included lines about “a wake-up call,� and his “rage� toward those responsible “for most of the abominations toward amateur life on this planet.�
The golden spruce, an impossible rarity, was gone. Hadwin’s position was: why get upset about one special tree when thousands of ordinary trees were cut down every day? But few saw it his way, judging from the outcry that ensued.
In the end, Hadwin vanished, presumed drowned while crossing the perilous Hecate Strait in a kayak on his way to a court hearing. But his body was never found, and those who knew him believe he had the skills to easily escape into the woods and start a new life somewhere far away.
The tragic irony for Hadwin is acute: in trying to make a stand for protecting the trees, he destroyed an icon for the Haida and became vilified by them. If he hadn’t disappeared, he might well have been killed.
Trees are a pretty political issue in the Northwest, but Vaillant straddles a moderate line for most of the book. He does come down firmly against the corporate-driven clear-cutting of forests. He takes readers through the development of logging, from hair-raising, brutal work by men and mules in the woods to the encroachment of mechanization and farmed harvests.
Loggers themselves are mostly represented as tremendously brave, hard-living men working one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. (There’s more than one injury related here that will make a man cringe in horror.)
The logging industry has been forced to change as once-inexhaustible supplies of old growth turned out to be finite. Some of the old loggers Vaillant profiles are a bit like Hadwin, loving the woods but distressed to see their final fate under man’s never-ending thirst for wood. “I never dreamed the old growth would be finished,� one longtime logger tells Vaillant.
Vaillant has written a story nearly anyone can enjoy - those left or right of center might quibble with certain points, but it’s overall a remarkably even-handed and thoughtful book. The Golden Spruce is worth reading for anyone interested in where the Northwest has been, and where it’s going.
A lot of trees have been destroyed in the past in the name of civilization.
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed tells of the life and death of that tree, which was cut down in 1997 by a disillusioned former logger. Like nonfiction writers John MacPhee or Jon Krakauer, Vaillant weaves facts into a compelling tapestry, with rich, layered prose, a fine eye for detail and a solid central theme he builds like a sturdy wood cabin. The Golden Spruce is a meditation on what the spruce itself meant, and a springboard for him to look at the conflict between man and nature in the Northwest.
Vaillant meanders a lot in his chronicle � the golden spruce disappears from the book for whole chapters at a time � but who can fault him when the digressions are as interesting as they are here? And they all relate back to the book’s central theme: the inherent tension between man and nature in this part of the country.
We learn the history of the Haida Indian tribe of the Queen Charlottes, who revered the golden spruce and were devastated by its destruction. We also get capsule histories of Northwest exploration dating back to the days of Captain Cook, and a detailed portrait of logging in the Northwest.
But perhaps most strikingly, Vaillant tracks down the sad tale of Grant Hadwin, who killed the golden spruce. Hadwin is like a character spliced together from Jack London and Edward Abbey books, with a dash of Hunter S. Thompson � from a wealthy Vancouver, B.C. family, he grew up to become a rugged outdoorsman, a logger legendary for his stamina and his fierce individualism.
Not a team player, Hadwin still managed to make a solid living working for logging companies. But as time passed, he grew more and more disturbed by what he saw as a greedy corporate mentality taking over the woods, and particularly the spectacle of clear-cutting. He became erratic and radical � some think he was suffering from mental illness.
One cold night in January 1997 on the Queen Charlotte Islands, Hadwin strapped a chain saw to his back, swam across an icy river to where the golden spruce grew � and cut it down. He meant it as a statement. A rambling letter he sent to area newspapers included lines about “a wake-up call,� and his “rage� toward those responsible “for most of the abominations toward amateur life on this planet.�
The golden spruce, an impossible rarity, was gone. Hadwin’s position was: why get upset about one special tree when thousands of ordinary trees were cut down every day? But few saw it his way, judging from the outcry that ensued.
In the end, Hadwin vanished, presumed drowned while crossing the perilous Hecate Strait in a kayak on his way to a court hearing. But his body was never found, and those who knew him believe he had the skills to easily escape into the woods and start a new life somewhere far away.
The tragic irony for Hadwin is acute: in trying to make a stand for protecting the trees, he destroyed an icon for the Haida and became vilified by them. If he hadn’t disappeared, he might well have been killed.
Trees are a pretty political issue in the Northwest, but Vaillant straddles a moderate line for most of the book. He does come down firmly against the corporate-driven clear-cutting of forests. He takes readers through the development of logging, from hair-raising, brutal work by men and mules in the woods to the encroachment of mechanization and farmed harvests.
Loggers themselves are mostly represented as tremendously brave, hard-living men working one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. (There’s more than one injury related here that will make a man cringe in horror.)
The logging industry has been forced to change as once-inexhaustible supplies of old growth turned out to be finite. Some of the old loggers Vaillant profiles are a bit like Hadwin, loving the woods but distressed to see their final fate under man’s never-ending thirst for wood. “I never dreamed the old growth would be finished,� one longtime logger tells Vaillant.
Vaillant has written a story nearly anyone can enjoy - those left or right of center might quibble with certain points, but it’s overall a remarkably even-handed and thoughtful book. The Golden Spruce is worth reading for anyone interested in where the Northwest has been, and where it’s going.
June 10, 2018
It seems that in order to succeed - or even function - in this world, a certain tolerance for moral and cognitive dissonance is necessary.
A Sitka spruce once grew near the banks of the Yakoun River in the remote Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte islands off the coast of northern British Columbia. It grew for hundreds of years before it was technically documented for what it was: a rare anomaly of genetics and environment, growing healthy and visible for miles. Revered by the Haida people, myths and legends surrounded the tree and its origins.
...and then in January 1997, the rare tree was felled by a former logger-turned-environmentalist, Grant Hadwin. Mentally unstable and misguided, Hadwin's ecoterrorism message was against the logging companies, and other environmentalists - attempting to gain their attention that they weren't seeing the forest for the tree. Huge tracks of old growth plowed down... but this rare tree wasn't touched. Hadwin's decades as a logger made him even more dangerous, as he so quickly hacked the tree that meant to much to the people of these islands.
The public outcry was immediate; followed by death threats, and law enforcement trying to figure out how to charge a man who so injured a culture, not just a mere act of vandalism. Hadwin didn't deny and stood by his act, but then, in a series of events leading up to his court trial, he vanished. His battered sea kayak and a few belongings washed up on shore, but no sign of a body. Rumors have circulated for years that he staged his own death, choosing to live as a hermit in the back country, along the border of British Columbia and Alaska.
The story is already quite dramatic, and Vaillant, as he did in his other book (which I loved!) The Tiger, provides a rich tapestry of history, both natural and cultural. I especially enjoyed the botany, forestry, and genetics, explaining why this tree was truly so special.
March 28, 2017
waffling a bit on the star rating... 3.5, if we could. not quite a 4-star read for me.
vaillant is a very good writer. i was riveted by his book , so was keen when the golden spruce was chosen for my in-person book group. the book club discussion was very good, and the group was divided on hadwin's fate - a testament to vaillant's writing and the structure of the book, leaving readers open to form their own ideas and opinions.
there is a lot of information and history presented and so much of it was fascinating. there were three main issues that kept niggling at me as i read, and kept me from giving the book a higher rating:
* wondering how this story would have been told through an indigenous author's voice and perspective;
* feeling distracted at moments when inferences or suppositions were made;
* concerns around the portrayal of hadwin's mental health/wellbeing.
these points aside, the story is very engaging - though i wasn't quite as riveted as with the tiger. vaillant really does have a way of creating nonfiction page-turners, and he made me truly care about so many aspects of this story.
vaillant is a very good writer. i was riveted by his book , so was keen when the golden spruce was chosen for my in-person book group. the book club discussion was very good, and the group was divided on hadwin's fate - a testament to vaillant's writing and the structure of the book, leaving readers open to form their own ideas and opinions.
there is a lot of information and history presented and so much of it was fascinating. there were three main issues that kept niggling at me as i read, and kept me from giving the book a higher rating:
* wondering how this story would have been told through an indigenous author's voice and perspective;
* feeling distracted at moments when inferences or suppositions were made;
* concerns around the portrayal of hadwin's mental health/wellbeing.
these points aside, the story is very engaging - though i wasn't quite as riveted as with the tiger. vaillant really does have a way of creating nonfiction page-turners, and he made me truly care about so many aspects of this story.
December 6, 2012
This book was informative, fascinating, beautifully written and haunting. Certainly continued the skew in my thinking away from the greed and destructiveness of logging companies....not to mention the continuing removal & killing of Native Americans. Had to weep at the losses.
May 3, 2015
A 3 star read rounded up to 4.
Sometimes a book turns out to be different from what you expected and such was my reading experience with the Golden Spruce. This makes it harder to be objective. I was expecting total focus on the cutting down of the tree and the man who did it. That is here, but there is so much more. And, well, had I paid attention to the subtitle and the picture (duh!) I’d have realized the book’s focus was the tree itself. It also doesn’t help that I had heard nothing of this incident and did not know of its sacred value to the Haida. In fact, I knew little of the Haida. Or the Queen Charlotte Islands. Or, for that matter, I guess I should include the northern tropical forest to this list. .
So it may be an unfair assessment to say Vaillant went into too much depth with many subjects peripheral to the main topic. Because if it’s a topic I already know about I love books that tell me more. And Vaillant leaves no stone unturned. Everything from how logging a tree works to hybridizing and splicing to the discovery and exploitation of the Queen Charlotte Islands natural resources to the wars and decimation of the indigenous peoples of the area.
But what I wanted was the story of the man who cut down this very, very special tree. He doesn’t appear for a long, long time because the story of the tree is very, very old. Think native myths of its origin and you get a small picture. Much, much happens during the hundreds of years in the lifetime of such a magnificent tree. A tree which may even have been so golden because there was something wrong with it. It may just have been sick and survived and thrived. A freak of nature.
By the time psycho man goes and chops the tree down, you realize how little it takes to kill it (I don’t advise it. It’s dangerous work and only a highly skilled logger could do it themselves.) and how long it took for it to grow. By the way, no one knows if he’s dead or alive. He was a sort superhuman. Super strong and able to withstand conditions that would put every other living being into hypothermia. Able to live weeks grazing on plants most of us would think of only as weeds. He disappeared into a climate that can decimate a body within a period of 24 hours. He may still be out there. Scary.
Sometimes a book turns out to be different from what you expected and such was my reading experience with the Golden Spruce. This makes it harder to be objective. I was expecting total focus on the cutting down of the tree and the man who did it. That is here, but there is so much more. And, well, had I paid attention to the subtitle and the picture (duh!) I’d have realized the book’s focus was the tree itself. It also doesn’t help that I had heard nothing of this incident and did not know of its sacred value to the Haida. In fact, I knew little of the Haida. Or the Queen Charlotte Islands. Or, for that matter, I guess I should include the northern tropical forest to this list. .
So it may be an unfair assessment to say Vaillant went into too much depth with many subjects peripheral to the main topic. Because if it’s a topic I already know about I love books that tell me more. And Vaillant leaves no stone unturned. Everything from how logging a tree works to hybridizing and splicing to the discovery and exploitation of the Queen Charlotte Islands natural resources to the wars and decimation of the indigenous peoples of the area.
But what I wanted was the story of the man who cut down this very, very special tree. He doesn’t appear for a long, long time because the story of the tree is very, very old. Think native myths of its origin and you get a small picture. Much, much happens during the hundreds of years in the lifetime of such a magnificent tree. A tree which may even have been so golden because there was something wrong with it. It may just have been sick and survived and thrived. A freak of nature.
By the time psycho man goes and chops the tree down, you realize how little it takes to kill it (I don’t advise it. It’s dangerous work and only a highly skilled logger could do it themselves.) and how long it took for it to grow. By the way, no one knows if he’s dead or alive. He was a sort superhuman. Super strong and able to withstand conditions that would put every other living being into hypothermia. Able to live weeks grazing on plants most of us would think of only as weeds. He disappeared into a climate that can decimate a body within a period of 24 hours. He may still be out there. Scary.
March 3, 2025
When I was in my teens, my family spent a summer in the archipelago of Haida Gwaii, travelling by boat around Moresby Island and by camper around Graham Island. We visited the Golden Spruce while it was still standing proudly in the Yakoun Valley although, from below and from my perspective, its unique majesty was lost in the foggy mist and among its similarly giant neighbours. But, all the same, the legends, narrative and science behind this unusual and fascinating tree were made clear to me back then via the conservationists on site, the naturalists' talk at the local campground and, most importantly, the immersive First Nations' legends which described the history and cultural importance of this tree.
So when that distinctive tree was fallen as an act of vandalism ten years later, I was astonished. It has now been 28 years since Grant Hadwin enacted his personal eco-terrorism and it has been 20 years since wrote this book. It has taken me a long time but I finally set aside my anger and summoned the courage to read about it.
Vaillant leaves no stone unturned in this sweeping record. He starts by describing the extreme beauty and remoteness of these islands. He then follows the known history of the Haida People and the rich lives they lived pre-contact. He delves into the first European contact, the otter pelt trade and then the harvesting of the 'iron wood' timber necessary for masts. He tells about the rich industry of forestry (and of fishing) and the way that forestry techniques have impacted insect infestations, forest fires and climate change.
But his research doesn't end there. He tunnels into the scientific data behind the survival of this tree's unique colour mutation and the unmatchable conditions which allowed it to thrive for 300+ years. He started to lose the thread with his detailed botany lessons about chlorosis and including the curriculum vitea of specific scientists who may (or may not) understand why this tree was able to grow at all.
Interspersed within the research is the story of Grant Hadwin - a logger who loved the forest yet made his living off clearcutting it. Somewhere in his mind, these competing values tipped the balance and he felt he had to teach the forestry companies a lesson. Falling this spectacular tree was the means by which he taught that lesson. He was charged and released on bail but failed to show up to his court hearing. He has been missing ever since.
It is truly a dreadful story and my anger has returned - and I applaud Vaillant for stirring up these emotions. Some people's memories of Hadwin make him come across as some sort of forestry guru who had mastery of this domain. Yet his absurd actions and his ignorance of the cultural importance of this tree to the Haida people speaks of a very sick dullard. People are still very hurt, angry and heartsick about it. Rightly so.
I loved this passage. It is just a small part of a brilliant description of Haida Gwaii and, indeed, my own home landscape:
[ side note:
For a book written about a unique tree, deep in the Canadian wilderness, by a writer who lives in Vancouver, B.C., Vaillant made the bizarre choice to use non-metric measurements for distance, weight and length. He also made comparisons of size with obscurely American elements - like the New York Times, the statue of liberty or Maine. I found it especially jarring when he referred to the Indigenous People as 'indians'. Who does Vaillant think his key audience is? ]
So when that distinctive tree was fallen as an act of vandalism ten years later, I was astonished. It has now been 28 years since Grant Hadwin enacted his personal eco-terrorism and it has been 20 years since wrote this book. It has taken me a long time but I finally set aside my anger and summoned the courage to read about it.
Vaillant leaves no stone unturned in this sweeping record. He starts by describing the extreme beauty and remoteness of these islands. He then follows the known history of the Haida People and the rich lives they lived pre-contact. He delves into the first European contact, the otter pelt trade and then the harvesting of the 'iron wood' timber necessary for masts. He tells about the rich industry of forestry (and of fishing) and the way that forestry techniques have impacted insect infestations, forest fires and climate change.
But his research doesn't end there. He tunnels into the scientific data behind the survival of this tree's unique colour mutation and the unmatchable conditions which allowed it to thrive for 300+ years. He started to lose the thread with his detailed botany lessons about chlorosis and including the curriculum vitea of specific scientists who may (or may not) understand why this tree was able to grow at all.
Interspersed within the research is the story of Grant Hadwin - a logger who loved the forest yet made his living off clearcutting it. Somewhere in his mind, these competing values tipped the balance and he felt he had to teach the forestry companies a lesson. Falling this spectacular tree was the means by which he taught that lesson. He was charged and released on bail but failed to show up to his court hearing. He has been missing ever since.
It is truly a dreadful story and my anger has returned - and I applaud Vaillant for stirring up these emotions. Some people's memories of Hadwin make him come across as some sort of forestry guru who had mastery of this domain. Yet his absurd actions and his ignorance of the cultural importance of this tree to the Haida people speaks of a very sick dullard. People are still very hurt, angry and heartsick about it. Rightly so.
I loved this passage. It is just a small part of a brilliant description of Haida Gwaii and, indeed, my own home landscape:
Down below, the undergrowth is thick, and between this and the trees, it is hard to see very far; the sound of moving water is constant, and the ground is as soft and spongy as a sofa with shot springs. You have the feeling that if you stop for too long, you will simply be grown over and absorbed by the slow and ancient riot of growth going on all around you. It can be suffocating, and the need to see the sun can become overpowering-something you could do easily if it weren't for all those trees.
[ side note:
For a book written about a unique tree, deep in the Canadian wilderness, by a writer who lives in Vancouver, B.C., Vaillant made the bizarre choice to use non-metric measurements for distance, weight and length. He also made comparisons of size with obscurely American elements - like the New York Times, the statue of liberty or Maine. I found it especially jarring when he referred to the Indigenous People as 'indians'. Who does Vaillant think his key audience is? ]
Read
March 20, 2022basically, capitalism sucks
December 16, 2023
Woooooooooow humans suck!
November 30, 2019
Overall Rating
I finally finished The Golden Spruce and recognize that I may have done a disservice to the author and the book by reading it in short doses over too long a period. That’s not how I like to read. I find the reading process much more fruitful and powerful by reading only only book at a time and over a short period so that only one book can be my primary focus. Unfortunately I had lots of work commitments and too many books on the go at the same time as I read The Golden Spruce.
That being said I enjoyed the book and would rate it 3 stars. I found it a difficult book to rate because it covers so many issues and topics. In the beginning there was some tough 2 star reading that felt like slogging. The small and compressed font made reading difficult for me and I wasn’t really interested in the extent of technical detail regarding logging equipment in a story I thought was about The Golden Spruce.
However, early on there were also 4 star flashes with respect to the coastal rainforest descriptions, the environmental issues and the Haida people. I really liked how the author always explained things in comparison to known things so that the awesome size and impact became very visual and immediately apparent to me. There was lots of information about these topics as well but in this case I found myself enjoying the detail, no doubt due to my interest in the subject matter and a higher degree of prior knowledge about it than I had with respect to logging equipment.
Many parts of the latter half of the book also deserved a 4 star rating. I enjoyed getting to know Grant Hadwin better, reading about others� thoughts about him and reading quotes from real people about their experience and opinions about logging. The inclusion of more people and information from them appealed to me. I also learned a lot about coastal waters and waves but once again there was a lot of technical knowledge and lingo about the various types of waves which were new and totally unknown to me.
The research and references were great. I was very impressed with the knowledge and mass of information and understanding that Vaillant has about the logging industry and the environment.
I do wish the book had been better organized. I found it meandered a lot and while I don't usually mind circuitous wandering or stream of consciousness writing in fiction, I think The Golden Spruce as a non-fiction. would have been an easier read if it was organized in a more linear fashion. Also, Vaillant or his editor might have reduced the amount of material being covered and cut out some of the subject matter i.e. he could have organized less material in a more understandable A to Z fashion. While I thought that Vaillant did a good job of bringing t together at the end with his critiques and assessments, I would have preferred a bit more pulling of things together as the book progressed as well.
Looking Forward to John Vaillant's First Fiction
I think Vaillant will do well writing fiction. He offered a number of critiques and assessments in the second half of The Golden Spruce. This deviates somewhat from many non-fictions but I enjoyed learning his opinions, given his tremendous knowledge and seeming thoughtfulness about the various issues. It almost seemed like he was holding himself back early on and after he had presented “all the facts� it was ok to “editorialize�. This was some of what I liked most about the book � his ability to see “the big picture.� I only have peripheral knowledge about the illegal immigration of Mexicans into the U.S. and have long been interested in the topic, so I think Vaillant will do a great job in his first fiction "The Jaguar's Children" � first doing in-depth research, second using his intellect to bring it all together to provide an overview and finally providing insight and suggestions. The only question for me is “can Vaillant capture the passion and humanness of his characters?� Based on his passion about the environment etc. as demonstrated in The Golden Spruce and his family’s history and love of Mexico, I am pretty confident that his new fiction will be a very compelling read.
Yes I Would I Recommend the Book Selectively and with a Caveat
I wouldn’t recommend The Golden Spruce to everyone but will selectively recommend it to people who are fairly technical in nature and who like to read non-fiction and technical material. Also I think people who are highly interested in or have visited the West Coast of Canada might enjoy The Golden Spruce. I think strongly committed environmentalists would also enjoy the book and it would be a good eye opener for those at the opposite end of the environmental spectrum with minimal knowledge or concern for current conditions..
My caveat would be that this book is really a History about Logging and that the Golden Spruce and Grant Hadwin are sub plots and not the major story. I was expecting and would have preferred the opposite. Nonetheless, I learned lots and it was a solid 3 star read with man 4 star sections.
I finally finished The Golden Spruce and recognize that I may have done a disservice to the author and the book by reading it in short doses over too long a period. That’s not how I like to read. I find the reading process much more fruitful and powerful by reading only only book at a time and over a short period so that only one book can be my primary focus. Unfortunately I had lots of work commitments and too many books on the go at the same time as I read The Golden Spruce.
That being said I enjoyed the book and would rate it 3 stars. I found it a difficult book to rate because it covers so many issues and topics. In the beginning there was some tough 2 star reading that felt like slogging. The small and compressed font made reading difficult for me and I wasn’t really interested in the extent of technical detail regarding logging equipment in a story I thought was about The Golden Spruce.
However, early on there were also 4 star flashes with respect to the coastal rainforest descriptions, the environmental issues and the Haida people. I really liked how the author always explained things in comparison to known things so that the awesome size and impact became very visual and immediately apparent to me. There was lots of information about these topics as well but in this case I found myself enjoying the detail, no doubt due to my interest in the subject matter and a higher degree of prior knowledge about it than I had with respect to logging equipment.
Many parts of the latter half of the book also deserved a 4 star rating. I enjoyed getting to know Grant Hadwin better, reading about others� thoughts about him and reading quotes from real people about their experience and opinions about logging. The inclusion of more people and information from them appealed to me. I also learned a lot about coastal waters and waves but once again there was a lot of technical knowledge and lingo about the various types of waves which were new and totally unknown to me.
The research and references were great. I was very impressed with the knowledge and mass of information and understanding that Vaillant has about the logging industry and the environment.
I do wish the book had been better organized. I found it meandered a lot and while I don't usually mind circuitous wandering or stream of consciousness writing in fiction, I think The Golden Spruce as a non-fiction. would have been an easier read if it was organized in a more linear fashion. Also, Vaillant or his editor might have reduced the amount of material being covered and cut out some of the subject matter i.e. he could have organized less material in a more understandable A to Z fashion. While I thought that Vaillant did a good job of bringing t together at the end with his critiques and assessments, I would have preferred a bit more pulling of things together as the book progressed as well.
Looking Forward to John Vaillant's First Fiction
I think Vaillant will do well writing fiction. He offered a number of critiques and assessments in the second half of The Golden Spruce. This deviates somewhat from many non-fictions but I enjoyed learning his opinions, given his tremendous knowledge and seeming thoughtfulness about the various issues. It almost seemed like he was holding himself back early on and after he had presented “all the facts� it was ok to “editorialize�. This was some of what I liked most about the book � his ability to see “the big picture.� I only have peripheral knowledge about the illegal immigration of Mexicans into the U.S. and have long been interested in the topic, so I think Vaillant will do a great job in his first fiction "The Jaguar's Children" � first doing in-depth research, second using his intellect to bring it all together to provide an overview and finally providing insight and suggestions. The only question for me is “can Vaillant capture the passion and humanness of his characters?� Based on his passion about the environment etc. as demonstrated in The Golden Spruce and his family’s history and love of Mexico, I am pretty confident that his new fiction will be a very compelling read.
Yes I Would I Recommend the Book Selectively and with a Caveat
I wouldn’t recommend The Golden Spruce to everyone but will selectively recommend it to people who are fairly technical in nature and who like to read non-fiction and technical material. Also I think people who are highly interested in or have visited the West Coast of Canada might enjoy The Golden Spruce. I think strongly committed environmentalists would also enjoy the book and it would be a good eye opener for those at the opposite end of the environmental spectrum with minimal knowledge or concern for current conditions..
My caveat would be that this book is really a History about Logging and that the Golden Spruce and Grant Hadwin are sub plots and not the major story. I was expecting and would have preferred the opposite. Nonetheless, I learned lots and it was a solid 3 star read with man 4 star sections.
May 19, 2022
In 1997, Grant Hadwin cut down a tree. As a lumberman, he had cut down many trees through the years. This was different. The Golden Spruce was iconic, unique, mythical. In the process of bringing Grant "to justice," he disappeared. What inspired Grant to cut down this important tree? Was he having a mental health crisis? Was he attempting to draw attention to the wholesale destruction of rainforests? A problem he helped bring about as an ex-employee of an ethically challenged lumber company.
Like John Krakauer did with Christopher McCandless for "Into the Wild, " Valliant wanted to explore the motivations of a man who was no longer here to speak for themself.
I found the story of Grant Hadwin compelling in no small part because Valiant explores the history of northwest lumbering and its impact on the native community and the environment. Something I would normally appreciate. For me, the pandemic has stressed me on issue involving environmental destruction. The problems are clear and the impact dramatic, the solutions are the hard part. But in all fairness to the author, he is not heavy handed about deforestation and has done fine job researching Grant Hadwin. Clearly written despite the wealth of information.
A must read if you live anywhere near Vancouver/Seattle. Much of the geographic location information was hard for me to keep straight. The "Golden Spruce" is also compared to "A Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger. Coupled with an individual's story, the authors explore the professions of their protagonists, fishing/Perfect and lumbering/Golden. Good journalism. Use the experience of a few relatable people to connect readers to the larger more complex macro issues.
Like John Krakauer did with Christopher McCandless for "Into the Wild, " Valliant wanted to explore the motivations of a man who was no longer here to speak for themself.
I found the story of Grant Hadwin compelling in no small part because Valiant explores the history of northwest lumbering and its impact on the native community and the environment. Something I would normally appreciate. For me, the pandemic has stressed me on issue involving environmental destruction. The problems are clear and the impact dramatic, the solutions are the hard part. But in all fairness to the author, he is not heavy handed about deforestation and has done fine job researching Grant Hadwin. Clearly written despite the wealth of information.
A must read if you live anywhere near Vancouver/Seattle. Much of the geographic location information was hard for me to keep straight. The "Golden Spruce" is also compared to "A Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger. Coupled with an individual's story, the authors explore the professions of their protagonists, fishing/Perfect and lumbering/Golden. Good journalism. Use the experience of a few relatable people to connect readers to the larger more complex macro issues.
July 6, 2012
The book was a giant let down. I wanted to love it, the pages and pages of glowing reviews in the front assured me I would...but no such luck. I even bought the actual book (instead of getting from the library) since I knew I would want to pass it to my dad to read, but now I can't justify giving this to someone.
The actual story of the Golden Spruce and Grant Hadwin is really interesting, but take up about 25 pages in this 300 page book. Some of the other content is also interesting, but in general it felt like Vaillant was trying to make a book out of something that really should have been a magazine article. For the last 4 or 5 chapters I pretty much just skimmed the paragraphs and decided I could skip 95% of it.
The actual story of the Golden Spruce and Grant Hadwin is really interesting, but take up about 25 pages in this 300 page book. Some of the other content is also interesting, but in general it felt like Vaillant was trying to make a book out of something that really should have been a magazine article. For the last 4 or 5 chapters I pretty much just skimmed the paragraphs and decided I could skip 95% of it.
February 15, 2019
A riveting read with breathtaking scope, considering that the core is a mystery story without resolution. Vaillant takes the reader on a walk through a vast tract of background, covering Canadian history from first contact, Pacific logging practices, Grant Hadwin's ancestry, Haida Gwaii traditions, and environmental opinion. All this with the pageturning energy of a murder mystery. But there's no convenient good/bad guys; there are complicated, layered, and very current issues to be weighed.
I think the ultimate beauty of the book is that it doesn't deign to make decisions about the story it's telling or tell you how you should feel about it, it just gives you all you could possibly want to know to draw your own conclusions, and thus leaves you with a very powerful, lasting feeling.
I think the ultimate beauty of the book is that it doesn't deign to make decisions about the story it's telling or tell you how you should feel about it, it just gives you all you could possibly want to know to draw your own conclusions, and thus leaves you with a very powerful, lasting feeling.
March 29, 2022
I think I read 3 different books that were poorly intertwined into each other.
May 7, 2018
What a painful book.
This is a story about a tree, although from the get-go you see it is actually about many trees. And actually it’s about the region of Earth (Queen’s Charlotte Islands in British Columbia) that hosts them and what relation its inhabitants have built with her in the last 300 years.
It talks about how western "civilization" has exploited the natural resources of the North-West without any conscience. This was and is primarily carried out by logging corporations, who nonchalantly cut most of the old-growth in the northwest -- majestic trees that were several centuries old, 7+ feet wide in diameter. It makes you think how stupid and careless we must be as a people to recklessly build machines that can cut through a forest as easily as a lawnmower can cut grass. A giant tree can be cut, prepared and put on a truck in less than 25 minutes nowadays. Up until what point are we going to continue to destroy a natural habitat that literally took centuries to form itself? Why do mankind has such difficulty in understanding that just because something (in this case, a forest) looks so vast that it appears infinite, it is in fact not infinite? That's the same approach we still have with the ice on the north pole and with petrol oil.
On the other end, the sad thing is that the men directly responsible for this savagery are the poorest people there. People that would not be able to find a job otherwise can walk into the forest, start cutting trees and all of sudden they are rich. From their point of view, this is an opportunity that they cannot pass, because society doesn't offer anything else. There's also the paradox that the more efficient they are at cutting down trees, the quicker they destroy their source of employment. And a century earlier, we see that other humans destroyed the population of sea otters, in the same careless fashion, to satisfy a business need. So, it's pretty cool that the author talks about these related stories and these existential conflicts. How we very pragmatically mix human economy with nature’s economy, even when the two are incompatible.
Another merit of this book is that it makes you think about how the actions you do in your life impact the world you live in. What you take for granted (paper, devices, the waste you generate) and what you can do. The tone is never preachy, and the descriptions and anecdotes are very inspiring.
Intertwined in all this is the story about Grant Hadwin and his controversial actions. I love how this guy is brought (back?) to life, the mystery behind his acts, his ability to live in nature (I want to be him), his skill as a logger and imperviousness to the elements, and the inner conflict he must have had.
But most importantly, I loved this book because it puts you in contact with the beauty of nature. It's really inspiring. How you can appreciate and sink into something that is marvelous, truly unique, and yet so fragile. It made me think about how meaningless, or at least less meaningful, are other details in my life that instead I dedicate a lot of time and effort to.
This is a story about a tree, although from the get-go you see it is actually about many trees. And actually it’s about the region of Earth (Queen’s Charlotte Islands in British Columbia) that hosts them and what relation its inhabitants have built with her in the last 300 years.
It talks about how western "civilization" has exploited the natural resources of the North-West without any conscience. This was and is primarily carried out by logging corporations, who nonchalantly cut most of the old-growth in the northwest -- majestic trees that were several centuries old, 7+ feet wide in diameter. It makes you think how stupid and careless we must be as a people to recklessly build machines that can cut through a forest as easily as a lawnmower can cut grass. A giant tree can be cut, prepared and put on a truck in less than 25 minutes nowadays. Up until what point are we going to continue to destroy a natural habitat that literally took centuries to form itself? Why do mankind has such difficulty in understanding that just because something (in this case, a forest) looks so vast that it appears infinite, it is in fact not infinite? That's the same approach we still have with the ice on the north pole and with petrol oil.
On the other end, the sad thing is that the men directly responsible for this savagery are the poorest people there. People that would not be able to find a job otherwise can walk into the forest, start cutting trees and all of sudden they are rich. From their point of view, this is an opportunity that they cannot pass, because society doesn't offer anything else. There's also the paradox that the more efficient they are at cutting down trees, the quicker they destroy their source of employment. And a century earlier, we see that other humans destroyed the population of sea otters, in the same careless fashion, to satisfy a business need. So, it's pretty cool that the author talks about these related stories and these existential conflicts. How we very pragmatically mix human economy with nature’s economy, even when the two are incompatible.
Another merit of this book is that it makes you think about how the actions you do in your life impact the world you live in. What you take for granted (paper, devices, the waste you generate) and what you can do. The tone is never preachy, and the descriptions and anecdotes are very inspiring.
Intertwined in all this is the story about Grant Hadwin and his controversial actions. I love how this guy is brought (back?) to life, the mystery behind his acts, his ability to live in nature (I want to be him), his skill as a logger and imperviousness to the elements, and the inner conflict he must have had.
But most importantly, I loved this book because it puts you in contact with the beauty of nature. It's really inspiring. How you can appreciate and sink into something that is marvelous, truly unique, and yet so fragile. It made me think about how meaningless, or at least less meaningful, are other details in my life that instead I dedicate a lot of time and effort to.
October 26, 2007
Extraordinary story, wonderfully told. Was haunted by this story ever since I first read part of it, I think in The New Yorker, or maybe Harper's. Pounced on it when I saw it had come out as a book. Not just the built-in tension of the disappearing hero/antihero, driven crazy/sane by eco-destruction, but an amazingly empathetic telling from the point of view of all concerned -- conservationists, First Peoples, and loggers (and sometimes, the same person can be all three). Plus of course that sacred, glowing, golden, mutant spruce...
October 1, 2020
Took me forever to finish this book! Had to force my way to the ending. I would have put it down, but there were some interesting facts in the book about the history of the Pacific Northwest, the indigenous people and logging. But the story of eccentric Hadwin and the Golden Spruce was only in about 1/5th of the book.
Though there were some great historical stories in here, I found the whole read monotonous and disjointed.
Would not recommend.
Though there were some great historical stories in here, I found the whole read monotonous and disjointed.
Would not recommend.
May 22, 2023
After a mostly boring, at times interesting, and long journey I finally finished reading this book. Did not pull me in and I found it hard to really engage with a lot of the logging history parts. Important stuff but snoreeeee! I did enjoy learning about the Golden Spruce and its different meanings to different people. A 2 for you!
November 21, 2021
This book is a prime example of why indigenous stories should be told by indigenous people. Vaillant does a very poor job of telling the stories he was entrusted with and his language is careless, with tones of colonizer apathy.
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