This story is the third and final in a series about a pair of pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) along the Clark Fork River near Missoula, Montana, USA. If you haven’t heard the rest of the story, you can start with part 1… or just jump in here!
When I next return to the pileated woodpecker forest, it’s early August, a hot afternoon with evening approaching. Wildfire smoke from Saskatchewan blurs the mountains into vague gray shapes and a western wood-pewee (Contopus sordidulus) sings lazily in the distance. The forest has changed dramatically since my last visit. Two weeks ago, the fierce winds of a freak thunderstorm pummeled Missoula, knocking down trees and powerlines. Here, it looks like a hurricane has passed through. The forest is still standing, but perhaps a third of the trees are gone. The wind snapped 60-year-old cottonwoods like toothpicks. The forest floor is littered with tree trunks and the smell of drying cottonwood leaves.
I pick my way over and around the debris to check on the nest tree. I fear the worst for it. Although the breeding season is over now, the woodpeckers might have reused the cavity as a winter roost—or, in rare instances, as a nest in a future year. But even if the woodpeckers never again were to visit their laboriously-excavated home, it would remain important to the forest community. Dozens of species reuse old pileated woodpecker nests to take shelter and raise their young, from western screech-owls (Megascops kennicottii) and wood ducks (Aix sponsa) to Vaux’s swifts (Chaetura vauxi) and northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus). As I get closer, I prepare myself for bad news. Is the tree even standing still?
Destruction and regeneration
When I arrive, I’m relieved to see that the snag is unharmed. In fact, this section of the forest seems to have gotten off easily, with just a few toppled trees and downed branches. In contrast, a stand farther away from the river looks like a massive bulldozer ran over it, knocking over more than half of the trees.
During the hot, late summer afternoon, a very occasional kekekekeKE in the distance is my only clue that the pileated woodpeckers are still here in their wind-struck forest.
Standing among broken tree trunks, I think about destruction and regeneration. The loss of these trees feels tragic. But I know this isn’t the end of the story. In a few years, the downed trees will fruit with oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus sp.)—delicious sauteed in garlic—as the cottonwoods slowly transform into soil. Perhaps a hollow log will become a winter shelter for a porcupine. Will the snapped-off trunks resprout next year, like they do when the beavers cut them down? In spite of the catastrophic winds, much of the forest is still standing. And if the river is allowed to flood, a future spring will deposit fresh sediments as cottonwood silk is flying on the breeze, and a new generation of forest will emerge.
Threads of story
Soon the fall carries me south, to my partner’s home in Oaxaca. But the pileated woodpeckers stay with me; the cottonwood forest stays with me, imprinted on my heart and mind. Sometimes I let my imagination wander among the tree trunks, not knowing what I will find: a pileated woodpecker family, a song sparrow’s nest, fresh beaver activity along the river, a new story in the wordless tapestry.
As I write over the winter, I gather together threads of story—special places in nature like this cottonwood forest, the call of a Cassin’s kingbird (Tyrannus vociferans), the dogbane that grows along the river and the birds of evening in the Oaxacan tropical forest—as I try to find meaning among the contradictions of my life. To love people and places bridged by jet fuel as climate change unleashes catastrophic wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes. To integrate into this Huatulco community as the tourist boom skyrockets prices, destroys mangroves, and changes ways of life. To seek a healthy relationship with the earth and my neighbors as billionaires and large corporations threaten it all to fill their pockets.
The Story is in Our Bones
I keep on thinking about the pileated woodpeckers as I read Osprey Oreille Lake’s book The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis. She writes:
…[W]hen we take a deep breath and slow down to really think about it, the things that actually make our lives possible and joyous very often are not the things that require extractivism or items to purchase. Photosynthesis, the hydrologic cycle, love, friendship, walking in the beauty of nature, mutual aid, sharing stories and meals—these are all things that can be done without financial exchange. In the current dominant culture worldview, which commodifies everything and sees things only for their deemed financial worth, we become further detached from what is given freely—wildflowers and glaciers are exiled to the realm of the superfluous since there is no monetary value assigned to them. We are taught in the commodification culture to lose respect and appreciation for many nonfinancially related treasures.
To counter this rapacious economic worldview, we can work to restore what many have called a gift economy—a system that many of our ancestors participated in, some communities still practice today, and has engaged an ever-growing network of thought leaders. One of the central principles is not to hoard wealth; rather, the gift economy framework is about understanding that the only way the entire breathing, living ecology of place and community survives and thrives is through mutual aid. By making and giving gifts and moving those gifts throughout the community, we ensure our human and nonhuman relatives are taken care of. The essence of this exchange model is about aligning our economies with the natural laws of the Earth and our neighbors.
In communities that have practiced the gift economy, valuables are not exchanged for money or for other goods but are instead given with no outward agreement that anything will be immediately returned. There is an implicit expectation that the person who received the gift will also give at some point in the future, whether back to the giver, to another person, to the land, or to the whole community, and until that happens, one remains in a state of positive debt. While debt is uncomfortable for those of us who live in a market economy, in a gift economy, debt is what binds one to the gift-giver and to the whole community, intentionally creating an atmosphere of ongoing reciprocity.
A gift economy
Osprey’s words ring true for me. I’ve experienced it so often in Oaxaca, this heartfelt generosity. An ear of maíz criollo, an invitation to share a meal. A complete stranger who invites me to visit their rancho. A glass of mezcal, an unhurried conversation, an “ésta es tu casa.” In many cases, to offer to repay these gifts with money would be an insult. And so I stay forever indebted, humbled, and grateful. I share my knowledge of birdsongs, pass on the gift of oranges from the abuelo Teo’s orchard, help out with dishes and firewood. Not to repay, because that’s not possible, but to pass the gift forward.
It’s that way with the pileated woodpeckers, too. How can I repay the gift of a wild call on the April breeze? They’ve showed me their home, trusted me with their nestling, helped me see the magic of this forest. To repay the gift would be impossible: I’m forever indebted to pileated woodpeckers. But I can try, in some small way, to reciprocate. To protect the location of their nest tree; to share the magic of their forest. To invite you, as well, to enter into a gift economy with pileated woodpeckers.
The song of the western screech-owl
It’s a starry April evening in 2025, one of those nights when the frost falls as soon as the sun sets. In a cottonwood grove along a stream in the western Montana foothills, a western screech-owl sings his bouncing-ball song as the water rushes over billion-year-old polished stones. I wonder if he has a mate yet, or if he’s still searching. I wonder whether the pileated woodpeckers have left a nesting cavity for him in this cottonwood stand, excavated one dry beakful at a time from the heart of a dead tree.
Each spring, the woodpeckers carve new holes, and their gifts continue for years afterwards. They provide homes where they didn’t previously exist for western screech-owls, hooded mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus), Barrow’s goldeneyes (Bucephala islandica), and American kestrels (Falco sparverius). Ésta es tu casa. The song of the western screech-owl continues in the frosty night: a song held by snowmelt streams, old cottonwood silhouettes, and the gift of the pileated woodpeckers. And in the quiet song of the owl, I seem to hear a “thank you.”
Further reading
Bull, E.L. and J.A. Jackson. (2020). Pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A.F. Poole, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/pilwoo/cur/introduction