Timber!

Modern humans often take for granted the sheer amount of resources we acquire from a forest. If you’re living in a constructed home, chances are it was built out of products acquired from trees. When you use the restroom, chances are you're drying your hands or cleaning your tuchus with materials made from trees. Everything from the books we read to the holiday cards we send are gleaned from forest products. Go back only as far as half a century, and the ability to procure and process wood was even more crucial to the survival of humanity. Timber was used almost exclusively to build nearly every structure, ignited to cook food, boil water, and to keep smithing forges hot.

Is Paul Bunyan Passé?

We find ourselves in a unique time in the human epoch — we’ve become less reliant on raw gifts from nature, instead leaning heavily on electronic technologies. But if you think that we can turn our backs on forest products completely, you’d be wrong. To illustrate this point, in February of 2021, a massive shift in atmospheric temperatures caused catastrophic power failures throughout much of the southern continental United States, leaving tens of millions without modern amenities to keep them warm and comfortable. Sadly, there were many people who asphyxiated on the toxic gases emitted from backup