Woodland - Spring 2013 - (Page 14)

features A chapel on a hilltop (below) and a clearing near a pond (right) provide serene settings on the Tree Farm owned by the Benedictine monks of Mount Angel Abbey. mount angel abbey st. benedict, oregon by paul tolme photos by katie benson S hafts of sunlight pierce the forest canopy and illuminate the morning fog as Dave Zentzis parks his truck on an Oregon woodland. A white clapboard chapel rests on a hilltop nearby, the cross on its steeple shaded by tall trees. All is quiet but for the occasional birdsong and the babble of a stream that drains down a hillside. “Peaceful in here, isn’t it?” says Zentzis. We are visiting the Milk Ranch, a 2,600-acre Tree Farm in Oregon’s rugged Cascade foothills, about an hour’s drive from Portland. In a region dominated by for-profit forestlands and public lands, this Tree Farm has a unique pedigree: It is owned by Mount Angel Abbey, home to one of the largest gatherings of Benedictine monks in the United States. 14 woodland • Spring 2013 Zentzis, a forester who works for the Portland firm of Mason, Bruce & Girard, manages the Tree Farm on behalf of the nonprofit Mount Angel Abbey Foundation, which oversees the revenue-generating assets of Mount Angel Abbey. Money from timber sales funds the abbey’s divinity school and pays for the upkeep of its seminary, dormitory and campus, which is located about 10 miles away in the rural farm town of Mount Angel. The Milk Ranch was certified as a Tree Farm in 1956 under the American Tree Farm System®. In 2012, members of the Oregon Tree Farm System erected a sign to commemorate the abbey’s more than 50 years of protecting wood, water, recreation and wildlife. Religious faith guides the monks’ forestry philosophy. The words “stewardship” and “patrimony” are prominent in the Tree Farm’s management plan. Harvests are modest in size. Short-term profits are sacrificed in favor of long-term revenues, forest health and aesthetic values. “Our biblical values inform our ideals,” says Father Martin Grassel, a monk who works with Zentzis. “God is the creator, and God put man in the garden to care for it. In God’s plan we have a role in caring for creation. At the same time, it is there for us to use.” The monks of Mount Angel follow monastic traditions, including periods of silence, group and solitary prayer, spiritual readings and manual labor. Benedictine monks founded

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Woodland - Spring 2013

Woodland - Spring 2013
Contents
Overstory
On the Ground
Faith and Forestry
Take a Hike!
Tools and Resources
Forests and Families

Woodland - Spring 2013