Toward a Natural Forest

April 3, 2015 By John E. Riutta in Newly Noted Books Tags: book, forest, furnish, Memoir, natural, News, Oregon, press, service, state, toward, university

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, the activities of the U.S. Forest Service were not just – as they might have been to many people elsewhere in the nation – the doings of some far off bureaucrats in Washington D.C.; they were the stuff of daily conversation around the restaurants and coffee shops of the hundreds of small towns populated by people who drew their existence from the vast tracts of forests that blanket the region.

So when I heard that Oregon State University Press was to publish Toward a Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transitionthe memoir of Jim Furnish, the retired Deputy Chief of the Forest Service and a key participant in a number of the decisions that so significantly effected so many of the people and places I knew, there was no question that it was a book I needed to make a point of reading. And now that it’s been printed, I shall waste no time in getting started.

John E. Riutta

Founder and publisher of The Well-read Naturalist. Inveterate autodidact. Has repeatedly been found out standing in many fields. Plays well with otters.

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1 Comment

Jim Furnish
April 16, 2015 @ 17:33

Thanks for picking this up, John. I’d be happy to discuss my book when you’ve finished.

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