The Honor of Seeing a Pacific Fisher

Knowing what I know now, this encounter feels even more precious—and more fragile. The Pacific fisher persists here as part of one small, isolated population in the Klamath-Siskiyou, already holding on in a diminished remnant of its former range. At a time when federal policy is pushing toward substantially increased timber production on public lands, I cannot help but feel that animals like the fisher, the spotted owl, and other old-forest beings are being asked to survive in landscapes increasingly shaped for extraction rather than continuity. These are not creatures of plantation forests. They are creatures of complexity, of older forests with structure, shelter, and memory. And if we keep simplifying those forests, we should be honest about what we are losing: not just trees, but whole presences, whole ways of being, and the chance for future people to ever see such a being in the wild.