Views From A Woodlot

Documentary Short - Coming Winter 2025

The Film

For 40 years, forester Bruce Spencer managed Massachusett’s 100,000 acre Quabbin Reservation, its reservoir and forests. The results included repeated awards for the cleanest urban drinking water in the U.S. (Boston’s) and a five-fold increase in standing timber. Since retiring in 2005, the now 83 year-old forest keeper has worked on his own 150-acre woodlot nearly every day, guided by the same forestry philosophy that he used on the job. Much of what he practices and preaches isn’t taught in forestry school.

The Issue

How should we use the planet’s forests? As furniture and houses, pulp and paper, or pellets to be burned for electricity? For recreation, conservation, or preservation? As a haven for biodiversity or for carbon sequestration to curb the climate crisis? “Sustainable Forestry” is an oft-used yet ambiguous label. Does it mean sustainable economically or ecologically? As a species and a culture, we will always have a need for wood. How we best harvest that wood and treat our forests is a question whose time has come.

The Story

Views from a Woodlot is an 18 minute documentary profile of retired forester, Bruce Spencer, and the 150-acre forest plot that he visits nearly every day and knows like the back of his hand. Through verité footage of Spencer cutting, skidding, and bucking-up , oak, hemlock, and pine along with atmospheric footage and audio of the forest -- furrowed trunks and saplings, fiddleheads and wildflowers, enthusiastic spring bird calls, and the hypnotic rhythms of the forest canopy and the racing clouds -- Spencer talks about his forestry philosophy, the failures of industrial-scale logging, the threats to forests, and his love for working in the woods.

Spencer is plain spoken and opinionated about how best to manage a forest for the long term. During a four-decade career, he was Chief Forester of the Quabbin where he developed forest management techniques that he puts into practice on his own woodlot today. Cutting firewood and saw timber, Spencer’s woodlot serves as a microcosm of forests in general, and his actions and perspective serve as a model for how to think about and treat the forests of the U.S. and, for that matter, the world.

For Spencer, a guiding principle is to “Take what the forest gives you.” He likes to say that you should, “Leave the forest better than when you started.”

Aldo Leopold wrote: “Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document,which faithfully records your personal philosophy.” This short film is a profile of a man who has worked in the woods all of his life and who thinks with the forest and future in mind.

Aldo Leopold - from The Last Stand (1942)

“In a complex forest, science knows only that it is best to let well enough alone. But industry doesn’t know this. I fear that the present mistreatment of the northern hardwoods may be pondered more seriously in 2042 than in 1942.”

“When we abolish the last sample of the Great Uncut, we are, in a sense, burning books. I am convinced that most Americans of the new generation have no idea what a decent forest looks like. The only way to tell them is to show them.”

Project Status + Timeline

The production phase of the film has been completed including: 1) filmed interviews with Spencer; 2) filming of Spencer at work in his woodlot; 3) filmed b-roll of the woodlot; 4) transcription of all footage; and 5) scripting.

Post-production began in Spring 2021. Activities in this phase include: 1) rough, fine, and finish cut editing; 2) musical composition and scoring; 3) graphic cards, titles, and credits; 4) audio mixing; and 5) color correction. Completion is scheduled for the end of 2024.

Outreach/Engagement/Distribution + Audience

Outreach and engagement for the film includes submission to a targeted group of environmental film festivals, as well as pitching to national online publications including Emergence, Aeon, NYTimes Op-Docs, New Yorker, Atlantic, and others.

The film will be offered to forest and forest conservation organizations for use with their initiatives and campaigns dedicated to sustainable forestry, forest conservation and forest protection, and directed at members, stakeholders, activists, and the general public.

Filmmaker / High Cairn Films

Chris Hardee was one of three filmmakers involved in the making of Marlboro Production’s feature-length documentary exposé BURNED: Are Trees the New Coal? about the biomass industry’s little-known and controversial practice of burning trees to generate electricity as a solution for climate change. The 2017 film was accepted at 14 festivals, won the Audience Award at the American Conservation Film Festival, has been screened in 17 US states and 7 countries, broadcast and streamed nationwide, and continues to be actively screened by forest conservation groups and activists around the world.

As founder of High Cairn Films, Hardee is focused on documentaries about the environment, sustainability, and education. Prior, Hardee co-founded and co-directed, Monadnock Media, a non-profit media organization that served conservation organizations, museums, parks, and historic sites nationwide.

The idea for Views from a Woodlot evolved from a five-year immersion in the timber/logging industries, forestry, and forest ecology during the making and screening of BURNED.

Crowdfunding Request

High Cairn Films is seeking completion funds for post-production and outreach/engagement activities, as described above, in the amount of $8,500. To date, the project has been funded with in-kind contributions of time, equipment, and expenses equivalent to a total of $24,600.

Get in touch if you’d like more information about Views from a Woodlot. Please consider contributing to the completion and wide distribution of the film.

To contact the filmmaker with questions: email - crhardee@myfairpoint.net; phone - 603-762-2010.

To make a donation, please access the GoFundMe page here.