Call me old-fashioned, but I reckon too much of our commentary on this (and every piece Cary writes, from what I can tell) is focused on the subject matter of the essay -- and our own views thereon -- rather than its execution. Is it too much to expect of comments that they at least, like, touch on what the guy who wrote this column actually wrote? Jeesh. Like I said, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but there it is.

Anyway, let me be a lonely voice in applause of this effort of CT's, on both the matter of responding kindly to LW's pain and desperate need for a consoling voice, and the somewhat larger matter of saying something that's true and useful. I think he may well have nailed it on both counts here.

Regardless of how she takes it -- though I suspect LW will take some comfort and draw both wisdom and resolve from this response -- I think CT is on to something in the direction he takes her predicament; I think he's hitting on a pretty basic fact about relationships that's remarkably seldom discussed: We're looking for someone to house, to love, the darker parts of ourselves. Anyone can love the other parts.

Thank you, Cary, for drawing that salient fact about us to the surface with elegance and compassion.

Nice work, Tim. Thanks for burning the midnight oil to bring to (early) light these bits of gold you've found in the garbage heap.

Thank you for this commendable piece. Steve Sillett is indeed a hero in these parts, and Richard Preston's book has done the sequoia ecosystem a great service. Those of us who cherish this precious sliver of the Northern California coast should appreciate any article that helps raise awareness about the extraordinary secret world that has managed to survive in a few intact pockets of remaining old-growth redwoods. There is so much for us to learn, so much comfort and inspiration to be taken, from the few truly wild places like this that still exist in the US, or perhaps anywhere. Humanity would be far, far poorer without them.

That said, I take issue with one line in particular in Carstensen's article:

"The patches of virgin coastal redwood forest that dot the map in Northern California in Mendocino and Humboldt counties were protected from logging operations by conservationists in various stages from the 1900s through the '60s."

This statement is wrong on two counts:

(1) It's far from true that most of the conservation work to date had been accomplished by the 1960s. While a number of large redwood parks had been established by then, often aided by the early efforts of the Sierra Club, in many senses the most important work of conserving what was left of the redwood ecosystem was just getting started (not surprisingly) in the '60s, and has proceeded in a much more effective manner in the past 20 years. And that leads to the other, more important inaccuracy:

(2) Much of the tiny fraction of remaining intact mature redwood forests is still unprotected. Entire groves of gorgeous, irreplaceable trees older than Christ, few as they are, are still being cut. Existing laws designed to protect some of them, flaccid as they may be, are routinely flouted and disregarded. And there are many people out here in Humboldt and Mendocino, the heart of the redwood empire, toiling to stem the damage before it is too late, so that our children's children will know what a truly wild redwood forest looks like.

Want to know more? Want to understand better the work that remains to be done to protect this invaluable biological resource? You could start by checking out the websites of a couple of extremely worthy smallish organizations that are devoted to protecting the heart of the redwood region:

www.wildcalifornia.org

www.sanctuaryforest.org

Yes, you'd be right to suppose that I'm not unbiased in this; I know and work with these folks. But none of us -- not the canopy biologists, certainly not the nonprofit environmental staffers -- is getting rich off this work, I assure you. It's a labor of love and a labor of conscience, plain and simple. So please, read up, get involved, and do what you can. And when you have the chance, come get lost in a forest of ancient 20-foot-wide redwoods. Then you'll understand better what all the fuss is about.