“No Better Than Its Woods”

by Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D., September 21, 2026, Durham, North Carolina

I sit in the woods, clutching a scrap of paper carrying W. H. Auden’s words: “The trees encountered on a country stroll / Reveal a lot about a country’s soul.” I’m surrounded by thousands of acres of forest, carefully replanted and tended after agricultural abandonment, and protected only after families descended from early colonizers sold off their farms acre by acre—first the unproductive land, then precious woodlots, and finally the old homesteads themselves.

I’m surrounded by woods and also, everywhere, by the work of humans. The pond that sits before me was created by damming a creek. My ears are filled with the whirring and crashing of saws and machinery harvesting a middle-aged loblolly stand. Even the nearly 100-year-old longleaf pines behind me were hand-planted by foresters, young and old, in the 1930s.

Auden says that “a culture is no better than its woods,” and so I am using my senses to gather up all the evidence I need to pass judgment. I see a proud beaver lodge on the impounded pond’s shore, domed and woven from hardwood branches. Beavers have returned after having been extirpated from the state. A couple of weeks ago, one of my camera traps captured the image of a gorgeous black bear, its fur rich and shining, its eyes curious, its mouth feeling the contours of our camera. The bears are filtering back into the Piedmont. The loblolly stand being cut, I know, will provide much-needed habitat for woodcocks—birds that nest, feed, and breed in a mosaic of early-successional habitats and whose populations are declining as the county’s agricultural lands give way to dense forest.

I am flummoxed. If the imprints of humans are everywhere, have we failed or finally found a path to mutual flourishing? How do we interpret the return of animal species? Are they being drawn in by responsible management or pushed out of other habitats that have become anthropogenic hellscapes?

I find myself unable to articulate the type of relationship I want humans to have with forests. I want us to stay out, but then the forests burn. I want us to intervene, but then we play God, choosing which tree species dominate and which animals thrive.

Are we conservationists, trying to prevent further loss, or ecological restorationists, repairing ecological damage? Is this a form of reconciliation, in which we design places so that other species can thrive in human-used spaces, or rewilding, which gives nature greater freedom to direct itself? Are we managers, rehabilitators, or stewards, recognizing the values of care, responsibility, reciprocity, and sustained attention?

I have seen stands “massacred to the last ash” by the emerald ash borer and grand oaks “with heart-rot.” But I don’t know if we’re a society “going to smash” or one grappling with our painful past mistakes and groping toward the light of sustainability and flourishing, finding a path of love and care. But I do agree with Auden: “A culture is no better than its woods.”

Reference

Auden, W. H. (1955). “Woods.” In The Shield of Achilles. New York: Random House.

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