This B.C. forester is salvaging wildfire-damaged trees to make prints of their rings

A forester in Kamloops, B.C., is turning the devastation of last year's wildfires into art.

Casey Macauley has been salvaging parts of trees burned in the White Rock Lake and Tremont Creek fires that displaced thousands of people in B.C.'s interior last year.

He then takes segments of the wood and creates prints of their ring patterns.

He said he had seen the technique a few years ago and, after last year's fires hit, he realized there was an opportunity to get some unique pieces of wood for the project.

"These are old-growth trees over here, they do get cut down periodically, but they are much less common than some of these younger trees," Macauley said. 

He said these older trees are often protected from conventional logging processes, but the wildfires allowed greater access to larger trees.

"To be able to go out and collect a sample like that without having to kill a tree or cut it down and just collect it as part of a salvage logging operation ... I was being a little bit opportunistic with that," he said.

To make the prints, Macauley cuts segments of the trunks, planes and sands them flat and then burns them with a blowtorch.

Because the rings have different densities, they burn at different rates. It means the end-of-year growth is left as a group of prominent rings, which can then be printed onto paper.

"There's so much history in each of these trees," he said, adding that some he has made prints from were between 100 and 300 years old.

He said other people seem to really connect with both the images and the stories of the trees.

Locally, he said the appeal seems to be their connection to last year's wildfire season.

"What we all experienced last year, it kind of makes it a bit more real," Macauley said.

'Neat piece of history'

Among Macauley's patrons are people who saw the devastation of the fires first hand.

Erin Holloway, a Kamloops, B.C.-based firefighter, said she'd actually tried to make similar prints herself but with no success, so when she found Macauley's work she knew she had to buy one.

"To have something that came from something that affected everybody around here for so long … I just think it's kind of a neat piece of history to have," Holloway said.

She chose a print from a piece of wood salvaged from the Tremont Fire near Logan Lake. 

"Once it's on the wall, you can look at it and go, 'that came from somewhere that got devastated and affected us'… now it's turned into something kind of super pretty and beautiful to look at," she said.