These cones are sent to the Bessey Ranger District in Nebraska four hours southeast of where I live. At the Bessey Ranger District there is the Bessey nursery, one of six major nurseries the Forest Service operates. The trees are then grown and sent back to the Pine Ridge Ranger District, among other places across Region Two.

I collected pinecones from the ground accessing the lower branches of the tree. The other four collectors were all certified climbers from our district and South Dakota. They collect their cones by climbing to the pinecone rich areas closer to the tops of the trees. Cones with bugs embedded in them were thrown out, and sample cones had to be cut in half to make sure there was enough viable seeds within. I learned it is best to have at least five healthy seeds visible in the dissection to make planting worthwhile.

Fires have limited the areas where healthy pinecone producing trees are found. We picked in two major areas over two days, and even in healthy ponderosa stands not every tree is going to be producing pinecones every year. This showed me the fragile nature of semi-arid coniferous forests, and how they are not going to produce a predictable number of cones each year. I grew up in a sub-humid climate where there is a greater variety of hardwood trees, but something about the uniformity of the pines has given me a curiosity to look past their western ubiquity and into their ecological relationship with the land.

The variety of work as a recreation employee on our district is one of the better aspects of the program thus far. Carrying two bushels of pinecones back to the truck from a nearby stand of ponderosa I can put pieces together. Recreation needs these seeds to grow for people to want to come see a healthy forest, to slow erosion and keep the brook trout streams clear below, to shade trails for bikers, and to bring birds back year after year for the sake of the birds alone. Working in a smaller district that contains semi-arid forests and a grassland has shown me thus far the interconnectivity of the wildlife, timber, ranger, fire, and recreation programs. One thing that certainly connects us is that we all, visitors and employees, certainly need the resilient forests that have been here for thousands of years.