“Forest Management,” says Justin La Mountain, “is doing the best to mimic the natural process...”

t sounds simple: horse-logging. What could be complicated about it? Get a horse, pull a log. But it is not a simple thing. The horselogger must know as much about his horses as the racetrack trainer, as the show rider. He or she must know how the animals think, what they feel, and why; how long before they tire each day, what individual quirks each has developed. What the horse logger senses about his companions represents years of learning and working with them.

But it does not stop with the animals. The horse-logger must also know about the woods. The make-up of the forest, the weights and values of the various trees. Which are healthy, which are ailing. The ones to harvest, the ones to leave. When the uninitiated stroll into the forest, we see trees and leaves and worry about bugs and maybe monsters. The logger has only to glance at a tree to know of its identity and history, and whether it is healthy.

The horse-logger is also a forest manager. Justin LaMountain, who lives on a hillside north of Warrenton, earned masters degrees in forestry and environmental management at Duke. Forest management, says LaMountain, is doing the best to mimic the natural process: applying a balanced-use philosophy. “The forest,” he says, “doesn’t need us. We need the forest.”

The aim when working in the woods, says LaMountain, is “to disturb the whole profile less.” The ordinary logger of the early 21st Century roars into the forest with noisy, belching machines and leaves behind a mess that sometimes makes people weep. The horse-logger takes a gentle approach, and needs a great deal more time to harvest the wood. The whole idea, according to La- Mountain, is to “improve the health of the woods...to create sustained income for the owner.” Instead of clear-cutting, take out a few trees that are sold to the mill this year. Come back next year and the year after and so on, for a few more logs to go to the furniture maker. “We are selectively removing the worst trees,” he says.

When a forest is clear-cut, more than the viewscape changes. How long does it take for the forest to recover? “Seventy-five to 100 years,” says LaMountain. No responsible landowner wants to be tagged as someone who caused such damage to his woodlands that his great-grandchildren will not see it repaired. The horse-logger clears out a few trees and leaves room for the largest, healthiest, most valuable trees to grow. He gives them room to stretch, reduces competition for light and nourishment.

Clear-cutting is not the only modern harvesting method that causes damage. Even using forestry consultants to mark individual trees for selective cutting does not mean that those trees so selected will be the only things marked for destruction. For bulldozers and backhoes trash the forest floor gaining access to the selected trees and then bump into, tear the bark off, and often even knock down any other trees that get in their way.

For the sustainable logger, with his gentle, hard-working team of horses, it is necessary to have another partner—the enlightened landowner, who might not reap as much financial gain using horses instead of bulldozers. “Clients,” says LaMountain, “need to have a strong conservation ethic… be interested in improving the health of the woods,” and approach forest care with “long-term vision.”

LaMountain and his friend Chad Vogel, another horse-logger in the northern Virginia Piedmont, have just such a knowledgeable client in Magalen Ohrstrom Bryant. She is the proprietor of Locust Hill Farm in Middleburg, 1,300 acres of gently rolling pastures and woods. The farm is dedicated to two crops: thoroughbreds and hay—high-protein hay. Bryant’s grandson, Mike Webbert, has been farm manager for less than a year and for the first time is applying a forest management program to the 339 acres of woods that adjoin the pastures and hayfields.