Hello,
My so in law, who is an engineer at Google, welcomes you... if you
ever get a chance to visit that place in the Silicon Valley...do so.
It is so unlike anything we have in the midwest, or elsewhere I
imagine...that is, if you like studying corporate America.

Now to forests...I got shut out of my latest trip to South Manitou
Island off the western coast of Michigan last weekend...too much wind
(30-45mph) made the ferry trip from the mainland hazardous. Instead, I
travelled sixty miles east to Hartwick Pines State Park near
Grayling.

I do not have any credentials in forestry, measuring or any other
academic similarities...I bring only to this group a professional fine
art photographer's eye.

Two observations:
1. Never before have I seen such a place with so many concessions to
casual tourist viewing. Paved trails, museums of the region's logging
heyday and even a chapel overlooking the old growth remnant.
2. They had a section where a huge fire had spread over a clear cut
region that had NO regeneration after eighty years...barren other than
some lichen and low grasses.

Can anybody give me some perspective about the place...how does its
"stump" area compare to Pictured Rocks' Kingston Plains area? Will
Norway maple take over that region as it might within Beall Woods in
southern Illinois? In the northern regions of Wisconsin and Michigan,
are efforts to plant white pine within mixed forests successful given
the dense canopies there? And finally...has there  been any discovery
of HWA in that region?

Cheers!