Literally every countries market on earth has gone up since 2024 or at least stayed flat - except Indonesia, which has fallen by quite a bit. It's fallen by 30% in the last year - which includes a 10% dollar decline so it really fell by 40%.
Indonesia is also the only developing / developed country that has population growth so that should be a long term tailwind.
With Taos being one - if not the main - epicenter of counter culture in the US having 50 communes around in the area during the 60s-70s, it's shocking how little is actually recorded from all this activity. There's one book, 'Counter Culture of the Southwest' - and that's about it that's actually transcribed.
The rest is word of mouth - and the word of mouth people are in their 70s now. Where were all the communes? Ask around and you can find out eventually where New Buffalo and Morning Star were, but some of this should really be recorded - who were they, what happened, how did they fall apart, how did Lama stick around etc.
The reason it's important is because everyone keeps coming up with grievances against the mainstream culture, but without a history of what the prior generation fought against and built to attempt to replace it, people are bound to repeat the same mistakes. I feel like people ought to know where good ideas started things, where friction came about, where existing community backlashed, etc.
Elm were way overplanted, a bunch died, and now we're at this point where there's a lot of options again, but they are still kind new to the scene. On paper elms are great for the rougher growing areas of the US like the plains and Rockies cause they are so hardy, they can take hail, they can take sun, both cold and hot, and don't grow super slow and bush up like some oaks and other eastern trees do.
How well do these perform in practice? Would you consider elms to be underplanted by this point - at least compared to trees like maple and linden and honey locust?
The one that tolerates the most extreme, nasty, and harsh conditions. The Contortae subsection, which includes the closely related lodgepole pine, jack pine, virginia pine, and sand pine species. The purple, green, yellow, and orange are lodgepole subspecies, the blue are jack pine, but they easily hybridize and are very close relatives. The last two aren't on the map, but they rope off the remainder of the eastern US.
It's incredible to think about what this implies about the past of the North American continent - how brutal conditions were. To me, this is one of the most clear indicators of what the climate and ecology was like the more distant past as these stands today are remnants of what was before.
Per gymnosperm database: ...We can say that the P. banksiana-P. contorta complex is the most widely distributed and successful pine in North America thanks to two primary modes of adaptation. The first is to tolerate extreme abiotic stress, to the point of successfully growing (slowly) and reproducing (slowly) on sites that would kill other conifers. In the second, it has life history traits that foster widespread and catastrophic disturbance, after which it spreads enormous seed crops and readily dominates the post-disturbance cohort. In some cases, that role is early successional and lodgepole eventually surrenders dominance to other species, but it can usually survive long enough to witness another catastrophic disturbance, restoring it to dominance https://www.conifers.org/pi/Pinus_contorta.php
Looking at Japan from satellite, the country is incredibly forested for how many people live there. How old and in tact are these forests though? Is it common to find groves of 300+ year old trees?
If they aren't old growth yet, do you think in 50 years a lot of the countries forests would start to be approaching that?
There's motorcycle trails, jeep roads, hiking trails etc all scattered throughout here, but the only thing that's actually continuous is the vehicle only Rampart Range Road. This whole area is quite fragmented.
I've always thought that a single track hike & bicycle with backpack camp spots along it would be cool and pretty easy to implement. It could go from Waldo Canyonish area to the Indian Creek Trailhead out of Sedalia. The nice thing is is that it'd be really easy to have spurs out to Rampart range road so people could do whatever sections they want and get supply drops. It seems like an easy win of a trail to build and something people could use for a first trial, training, or winter treks cause it's all below treeline. It'd be the only thing like it within an hour of both Denver and the Springs.
The downside is the noise from the OHV vehicles, but I think they are more west of Rampart Range Road so this could be more on the east side?
The more I research this tree, the more astonishing it is. I don't think there's a better tree that tolerates continental / temperate conditions for lumber. It grows really fast (like 3-4 feet a year), grows in wet and dry locations, grows in a lot of different soil types, fixes its own nitrogen...
From the lumber perspective, it's amazing. It's hard (Janka 1700), more dimensionally stable and less warpy that oak or even maple or ash, it's very rot resistant... Like for flooring, it's the best non tropical species there is based on specs for hard and stable! Good firewood too fwiw.
I don't see how a tree that's super hardy, fast growing, and great lumber characteristics could not be widely desired.