The motivation of hope

All a forest manager has is hope, the drive to improve the woods through work.  You never know the end result, yet the motivation leads to a vision of a better tomorrow for preferred species.  On the last full day of spring, when humidity started to descend and work conditions were not the best, some bow sawing and lopping gave more light to several young oaks, birches, and sugar maple.

Here's a yellow birch prior to the removal of two small balsam fir blocking daylight.  The birch now has the vital sun in larger quantities.

This baby oak, suffocating under total shade, still looks deformed and outgunned by other trees.  But hope lives now with more sunlight!  The cut trunk to the right of the oak are the remnants of a diagonal ash, dropped for the oak's benefit.  A larger balsam fir's demise from the bow saw helps the oak, as well.

Here are two more oaks, neither in the best of shape, that gained live-giving sun through a bunch of lopping and some sawing.  One oak leans too much, while the smaller one at the bottom of the picture needs a lot of luck to survive, even with more light.  As the #1 rule of forest management states, however, never give up on an oak!