At the heart of this essay—which appeared first in the Journal of Policy History (2009) and was revised for Steve Wilent, ed. 193 Million Acres (SAF 2018)—lies what is now a quaint set of assumptions. That whatever transformations might occur in the structure and mission of the US Forest Service, that they would be devised in collaboration with Congress, in consultation with a wide array of interest groups, and abide by then-current federal laws. There were, I thought, sturdy guardrails in place that, regardless of the structural changes, would ensure the continued stewardship of the national forests, wildernesses, and grasslands. Since January 20 th , those assumptions have been blown to pieces. This administration’s dismantling of the agency’s capacities has been disturbingly intense—the firing of hundreds of employees, the retirement (forced or voluntary) of hundreds more, has left the Forest Service bereft of rangers, supervisors, and directors. Their departure is by design, of course: without staff, the agency cannot enforce the laws its public servants swore to uphold (and did). Absent these principled individuals, the administration seems poised to off-load federal lands to the states (see Martin Nie’s brilliant discussion of this threat in The Smokey Wire, April 21, 2025); or let them be picked apart by private interests (as an example, see David Mertz’s discussion of the Maude family case in The Smokey Wire, May 7, 2025).
So, if you’d like to step outside of the current (and cynical) chaos, and contextualize it by reading how the Forest Service has evolved over time and how change might have occurred in a more transparent, consultative, and democratic fashion, read on.
Here’s a link to the original piece in the Journal of Policy History.
As I did yesterday, I’ll pick some pieces out from the 2009 paper that I find interesting, which might not be yours, so feel free to comment on anything in the paper.
Scenario One: Evolutionary Dynamics
Since these laws were adopted, the agency has appeared to be wandering in the forest. Pounded in federal court, faced with drastic budget cuts and sharp reductions in personnel, it has struggled to find its way, leading one former chief to argue that it is mired in “analysis paralysis,” a logjam preventing it from doing its proper work. Complicating this struggle to define its contemporary mission has been steep declines in timber harvests, escalating population pressures along the urban-wildland interface, increased recreational use, intensifying forest fires, and serious water-management issues.
No wonder the agency’s morale is low. 10
The footnote goes to 10. Jack Ward Thomas, “What Now? From a Former Forest Service Chief,” in A Vision for the Forest Service: Goals for Its Next Century, ed. Roger Sedjo (Washington, D.C., 2000), 10–43; Char Miller, “Identity Crisis,” Forest Magazine, Winter 2008, 44–47. I don’t recall my morale being low in 2009, and if it had been low, it would have been more about irritating supervisors or employees, byzantine hiring practices, and inscrutable computer applications, and not so much about an agency identity crisis. But that’s just me.
And “analysis paralysis” was actually part of a broader social tendency, which we find in articles about “why we can’t build things” and similar topics. Although when we worked on it (I was the NEPA person on the Process Predicament team) we never thought ourselves as part of a larger societal movement. For example in the recent discussions of Abundance by Brink Lindsey (April 25, 2025 to be exact:
The irony, as Klein and Thompson point out repeatedly, is that this new progressivism has ended up empowering an especially hidebound kind of conservatism: an enervating “procedure fetish” within government, combined with a hydra-head “vetocracy” outside. This combination has saddled us with a woefully underperforming public sector generally, and an especially profound disability with respect to any project involving the large-scale rearrangement of atoms in the physical world.
The FS was talking about this in the 90’s, but no one was listening. The change that I see is that due to climate change mitigation, different and more important folks want to rearrange atoms.
Scenario Two: Devolutionary Process:
Indeed, a proposed alteration that the Forest Service has faced—and to date has fended off —is the devolution of its lands and authority to the individual states in which its forests and grasslands are located.
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Much more plausible are calls for the creation of a cooperative conservation strategy in which local groups and federal land managers together develop forest plans. Th is has a historical basis, too: Circular 21 (1898), which promoted the agency’s cooperation with private landowners, found its analogue in other initiatives that encouraged forest rangers to discuss with local communities and economic interests how best to manage the forests. More recently, cooperative actions have been nurtured by the National Forest Management Act and the Endangered Species Act, which require public participation and interagency coordination. They have also been energized by community environmental initiatives promoted at the 1997 Seventh American Forest Congress. Bolstered by university-sponsored think-tanks,such as the Public Policy Research Institute at the University of Montana, they have launched several successful ventures, including the Quincy Library Group (1992) and the New Ranch program developed by the Quivira Coaltion (1997). The latter seeks to operate within what it calls the “radical center—a neutral place where people could explore their interests instead of argue their positions—and at the grassroots, literally the ‘grass’ and the ‘roots,’ where, we believed, trust needed to be built anew.” 16 The “Lubrecht Conversations,” held outside Missoula, Montana, in 1998, shared this commitment to a “bottom-up” approach to national-policy reform. Local consensus management would evolve to include wider water-shed and bioregional perspectives that then would shape the national agenda.
Most captivating was the group’s call for the creation of a “virtual” Region 7 within the Forest Service wherein districts and forests would propose “to develop practical collaborative decision-making processes at the local/regional level, which might eventually evolve into a national restatement of basic mission.” If acceptable, the Forest Service would fund the experiment but would not retain authority over its design or implementation. 17
Although to date “Region 7” remains but a tantalizing idea, other experimental formats have been enacted. One on-the-ground example is the Valles Caldera Trust (2000), a government-owned entity that provides management and administrative services for the Valles Caldera National Preserve in northern New Mexico. This national preserve suggests the array of options that have been emerging in timber towns and ranch country in response to decades of political discord, legal wrangling, and bureaucratic entanglement.
This development received another push in August 2005, when the White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation convened, a sign that community-oriented, collaborative conservation has captured considerable political interest and generated significant momentum. 18
I thought all this was interesting because it makes me wonder what happened to those groups? QLG, Quivera, Valles Caldera? And if Collaborative Conservation was a thing in 2005, how did we end up with the recent Rock Springs RMP, Lava Ridge Wind Project (granted those were BLM, and therefore more overtly/organizationally political). Are “bottom-up” efforts to some extent overwhelmed by national partisan political inclinations and the wills of key Admin allies?
Scenario Three: Revolutionary Impulse
The creation of a new Department of Conservation in the executive branch, by contrast, would expand the federal managerial presence and its regulatory authority. With a seat in the cabinet, this department would house the nation’s most important land-management agencies—the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, the Geological Survey, the National Resources Conservation Service, and the National Park Service, among other entities. By creating economies of scale and greater efficiencies of action, this new department would save money and would serve as a standard bearer for the modern environmental movement.
Miller has a history of related efforts on pages 98-99
Despite the failure of these various presidents to create a conservation superagency, there are signs that an integration of agency function is under way. In 1997, Congress authorized a program called Service First: Working Together, in which the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management were authorized to merge various functions. One such joint venture is the Durango Public Lands Center. Th rough it, the two agencies manage their lands in southwestern Colorado. Th e leadership of the San Juan National Forest and the San Juan Field BLM Office, like the twelve-person staff , is “cross delegated.” Because each employee is responsible for “all aspects of the two agencies’ work and is equally responsible to the USFS Regional Forester and BLM State Director,” because each is required to be fluent in both agencies’ statutory regulations and wears the two uniforms, this is an innovative, even unusual, arrangement. The San Juan is “the only organization in the country with a single team providing leadership in all aspects of land management and public service for the two federal agencies.” 23
These interchanges are part of a larger attempt to merge scarce skills and resources among the nation’s land-management agencies. Forest policy expert
Sally K. Fairfax has argued that more should be done to facilitate the convergence of the identities and missions of these agencies. Noting that “the historic distinctions and feuds” between the Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management “no longer matter,” she observes: “The hostility between the advocates of forest reserves and park reserves that began before either agency was formed conceals the fact that for most of their existence, they have been more alike than not. As timber fades as a Forest Service preoccupation, and recreation emerges as dominant [in] present and future concerns, the justifications for having multiple and distinct federal management agencies fade as well.” 24
The often-prescient Fairfax said this in 2005. Of course, both BLM and the FS have fuel management as goals, and BLM has the additional responsibility for minerals.. but still her views seem eminently reasonable.
Lending further credence to her argument is a November 2006 Memorandum of Understanding that the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service signed in partnership with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. It committed the four agencies “to carry out shared or joint management activities to achieve mutually beneficial resource management goals.” Service First authority has been utilized primarily for merging offices, issuing joint permits, sharing management, and creating single points of contact for resource programs. Given the patchwork of lands each agency manages and the proximity of their holdings, this integrative approach makes considerable sense, so much so that the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Army Corps of Engineers are considering seeking Service First authorization. In this incremental fashion, the dream of a Department of Conservation that has eluded several presidents.
Whatever happened to Service First? Often critics of rapid change will argue that change should occur slowly, but organizational antibodies tend to react strongly to change. For example, I was told by a knowledgeable person that the San Juan experiment was stopped by one State Director. I found this hard to believe, but organizations survive, I guess due to their strong immune systems.
I should note here that the alignment of the Dept of Conservation is not the same as moving the FS to Interior and not the same as “one Wildfire Agency”. Still it gives us the picture of the long-term signal versus any individual reorganizational effort.
From Miller’s summary:
Separately, none of the three scenarios sketched out here—evolution, devolution, revolution—will have much chance of redefining the Forest Service’s twenty-first century structure or its guiding perspectives. None of these possibilities will be achieved without reference to or in combination with the others. Moreover, although any change in the agency’s land-management mission will require internal support from the leadership and staff of the Forest Service, the real locus of any such transformation lies in Congress and the executive branch.
But of course many structures can support the same mission. What do you think?
Wow, that’s a lot of stuff to unload! I read it twice, but was really hoping to find a “YouTube”, or podcast where I could listen and watch Char Miller; he is a fascinating speaker and massively talented.
But alas, here we are. I actually went back and referenced NFMA of 1976, to try and piece together what I thought I knew, with what I was reading. How did the FS get so lost? I recalled the five year certification requirement and how nowadays, it means nothing! I know there are Units that take that requirement to heart, many others do not! As a former silviculture practitioner, the reference (in NFMA) to culmination of mean annual increment is another casualty of memories lost, with modern federal foresters.
Planning? Every 15 year requirement? I know, I know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but we’ve wandered far! I wish there was a way for Congress (they must be good for something) to stand up and help identify what and where the FS needs to go. I don’t see that happening and all I see is smoke, lots of smoke in our near future!
One difficulty with NFMA of 1976 is … the “1976” part. It was an innovative, even adventurous piece of legislation in its time. But it was written when people had rabbit ears on top of their (occasionally color) TVs (kids, you can google these references).
This legislative sclerosis is not unique to federal land management, but it is particularly visible and pernicious in that context. Many who oppose updating NFMA fear, not unreasonably, that the resulting update could be worse. But I think we must confront what we have learned since then rather than wishing that all that stuff didn’t happen.
Char Miller highlights the gap between the leadership in the Forest Service and the folks working on the National Forests.
His comment: ………..Bolstered by university-sponsored think-tanks,such as the Public Policy Research Institute at the University of Montana, they have launched several successful ventures, including the Quincy Library Group (1992).
I ran into a colleague a few years ago that was involved in the Quincy Library Group and his observation was that it was a total waste of time and Federal dollars. Yet, the Forest Service leadership views this as a success!!!
Worse yet, was Jack Ward Thomas comment “obey the law and tell the truth”. That comment in my eyes, and many of my fellow Forest Service workers, meant to them that Forest Service leadership was completely out of touch with reality and the people that worked under them.
That was the end of my respect for Mr. Thomas.
Did he really believe that Forest Service employees were NOT obeying the law and telling lies to the public??
If so, he should have started firing Forest Service employees. The fact he didn’t tells me he knew his statement was a lie and given for political effect.
With regards to Valles Caldera I spent the day with a WO individual on Snoqualmie Pass developing a strategy for land exchange. When he found out my background in economics and recreation, he made a pitch for Valles Caldera that they needed somebody with a background in both those fields to make the management a success.
It wasn’t going to be a success and anybody with a background in economics and recreation knew that. It was destined for failure. It is a failure of leadership, to not understand which projects are doable and which are destined for failure.
Somewhere along the line, the Forest Service leadership bought into the thought that economics was more important that values or a land ethic. I think they traded Aldo Leopold for Milton Friedman.
Economic analysis become the tool of choice for decision making whether it was appropriate or not.
Jack Ward Thomas had no background in economics and it showed in his tenure as Chief. And quite frankly, he didn’t have much of a understanding of the rural west or a land ethic in my humble opinion.
But he did know how to create a sound bite for the media.
The way I look at it.. first economists were in charge of policy. Then wildlife biologists (per ESA). Then vegetation modelers (coarse filter/fine filter) and possibly now, with much angst, climate modellers and fire scientists or a combo of the two.
I recommend JWT’s journal for insights into the way he thought.
Focusing on the second half of this post, “The San Juan is “the only organization in the country with a single team providing leadership in all aspects of land management and public service for the two federal agencies.” Not true, the San Luis Valley Public Lands Center was doing the same thing combining leadership and program leads. I worked for both agencies as the public affairs specialist and was part of the leadership team.
“Service First authority has been utilized primarily for merging offices, issuing joint permits, sharing management, and creating single points of contact for resource programs.” One of the primary purposes was for seamless customer service to the public.
“… a November 2006 Memorandum of Understanding that the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service signed in partnership with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.” This was also true with the San Luis Valley, including the Rio Grande NF, BLM San Luis Valley Field Office, Great Sand Dunes National Park and the San Luis Valley Wildlife Refuges. There was also a separate document for joint fire management in the Upper Rio Grande sharing staff and resources for initial attack and prescribed burning .
“…I was told by a knowledgeable person that the San Juan experiment was stopped by one State Director.” Sharon, I’m curious if you were told that by a USFS person. Really the problem was a personality/control conflict between the State Director and the Regional Forester. I would put equal blame on both of them. I got caught up in the middle of this conflict when I was given different direction by State and Regional Offices concerning the canceling of an O&G lease sale that covered mostly NFS lands. I found a target that both agencies could agree on – the Canada Lynx. This was not untrue, but it was part of a bigger problem tied to a previous IBLA decision on the Gunnison.
My observations from the experience: Many employees struggled with losing their BLM or USFS identities. Many employees suddenly had twice the workload and didn’t like it. I also had twice the workload, but I enjoyed the challenge and the learning opportunity. There were also challenges with DOI and USDA policies not always aligning. All the comments I received from the public and local governments were positive. A common response was, “It only makes sense.”
One last thing from my perspective: Although I had always been a USFS employee, I much preferred working with the communication folks in the BLM State Office than the R2 Regional Office. The BLM people supported my efforts while the R2 people tried to micro-manage me. The R2 communication office had no understanding of the San Luis Valley culture.
Thanks for this, Mike! I was aware of the SJVPLC but maybe Char was not? That’s one reason I hope that TSW is useful.. to add info to what historians like Char find out.
And I was told that by a retired bi-agencyual person. I had heard the story that the RF stamped it out also.
So it sounds like a fairer story might be:
Getting together in some ways made sense to do.
The obvious problems and incompatibilities were not ironed out, at least, in part, due to lack of commitment by various bureaucratic elements on each side.
Part of this was due to perceived loss of control, or accountability or both.
Individual career SES folks (at the Regional/State level) were able to stop innovation in its tracks, despite (lukewarm? support from DC) and the strong support of the public and local governments.
Would you say that this is a fair summary?
Yes, I think that is a fair summary from my perspective. I have to wonder if disgruntled employees at the ground level also had an impact as everyone had opportunities to share their views with higher levels. My take was that the vocal disgruntled employees were the usual suspects of complainers. Personally, I greatly enjoyed working for both agencies, but there were weeks I wished I had an assistant.
Perhaps if leaders wanted to do it, they would focus on working on the complaints identified and encouraging the helpful employees.
If they didn’t want to do it “listening to employees’ concerns” makes a good rationale for stopping..
What some might get out of it is …”it’s too hard to change, so it doesn’t matter what the public thinks” and “maybe if we stop this one, we can push the need to change into the future when someone else will have to do it.”
And having been in the RO for some of that, certainly the DC elements of BLM and the FS were not “all-in” either. So the RO was between “good people on the ground innovating” and “we’re not changing anything” from the WO.
I did read the Forest History interview with JWT. That was good. I also read JWT book, a few years ago. I liked the interview better than the book.
Are his journals available on-line??
I like your look at who was in charge. Except I think the economists were in charge even during FEMAT.
I returned to UC Berkeley for a visit in the early 1980’s and Dr. William McKillop asked me “what the hell was the Forest Service doing using ForPlan?” McKillop was timber oriented, but he pointed out that the planning problem on Forest Service lands was more than timber management and that by using ForPlan; timber became the planning problem. His comment was that it was setting up the Forest Service for failure in forest planning.
He was correct.
Even during FEMAT, everything revolved around the ForPlan runs for decision making. Which was stupid since the decision was how to insure that old-growth dependent wildlife species survived.
I guess we were sensitive to that on the Wenatchee given our fire history. That was the issue, not timber harvest.
I really do believe that is why the Northwest Forest Plan was such a total failure.
Also I don’t think very many people in the Forest Service understood that the role of ForPlan was to confirm that we were operating under non-declining even flow and that the National Forests were sustainable in timber production of hundreds of years.
I question whether non-declining even flow even made sense. On the Wenatchee, ForPlan indicated that we would violate non-declining even flow 290 years from 1990. So we took the timber harvest reduction TODAY to avoid a timber harvest reduction 290 years from now!!!
Does that make sense??
It got sillier as time went on. In 1994, I ran ForPlan to see how much bio-mass the Wenatchee National Forest was producing with everything in solution. It looked like the growth was 500 million board feet a year. The Clinton Forest Plan solution was 25 million.
That’s fine.
EXCEPT the Regional Office asked the Wenatchee if the 25 million was a sustainable harvest level!!! Your growing 500 million board feet a year, and you think that you cannot sustain a harvest level of 25 million, because you don’t want to overcut the forest??
I told the Forest Supervisor he could get 25 million clearing the roads with green slip sales.
It lost all semblance of reality at that point. But ForPlan became reality for the leadership in the Forest Service, and the actual forest became a fictional place.
In 1997, I was liberated from the madness when I became the Recreation Program Manager for the forest.
Forest Service and BLM, in states with 40% or more federal land, have to understand the NON federal point of view, their fears, the past results, and address the economic reality. Selling a limited number of permits to use USFS trails and “preserved areas.” is not an economic boon. Today a 5 store outdoor recreation equipment chain in Potland announce they are shutting down and liquidating. There are none in that 3/4 of Oregon where federal land outnumbers private land, most of that held by owners of 5000 acres or more.
My grandfather was GLO investigator and prosecutor for crimes against the public domain in Oregon. Depression era. Timber trespass taking Port Orford Cedar was worth the effort due to value for making battery separators. Lots of phony mining claims made to get the timber. Enforcing Taylor Grazing acts during the transition from horse power to tractors was part of the job. Branded horses wintering on the public domain resulted in a bill for 2.5 AUMs for each horse month on public land, which resulted in a plethora of wild horses, unbranded, and the branded ones replaced by engines and 7 cent diesel or 10 cent gasoline. He ended up in S.F. in the US Court Hdouse, his job for Interior encompassing the entirety of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals jurisdiction.
The missing element in this discussion is that federal land cannot be an economic threat for personal and state ruin. Once it was 75 cents of every dollar of federal revenue from public land stayed in the county of origin. Then it got reduced to 50%, and then that further reduced to 25% to the county and 25% to Interior locally for the Bureau of Public Roads, and USFS stayed at 25% but timber sale roadbuilding was accomplished with road credits where the USFS road construction estimated costs were paid to the sale purchaser “in kind,” R/W, and then sale unit timber at the sale bid price per mbf value for each species removed. 25% of the “road credits” were considered sale revenue and was sent to the county of origin.
Because an ignorant public was told by USFS “partner” NGOs that road credits subsidized timber barons stealing USFS logs, the agency had to go the lump sum sales. That only lowered bid prices, and cost local counties money. My congresswoman at the time was too stupid to understand the “complexity” and voted to end road credits. She had both Mt Hood and Willamette NF timberlands in her district gerrymandered just enough to include a piece of SW Portland metro area in it. Oregon “O&C counties, and USFS counties have no money to support the Sheriff, DA, Courthouse, jail, county roads losing the “in lieu” revenue sharing. Too little private property to tax and voters will not shoot themselves in the foot by increasing taxes as jobs disappeared and continue to do so.
The result is Wilderness is an ICBM of potentially explosive fuels pointed at private land and mid summer to fall east winds following the myriad unplanned ignitions from lightning are smoldering or being “watched” to become project fire and the US Government has absolutely no tort liability for damage by federal land source fire and the private sector has unlimited tort liability if ignition from private or state lands burning federal land: value plus federal suppression costs are litigated daily by US Justice Dept civil law US attorneys. Too often over zealously by state and federal prosecutors. CA AG Kamala Harris was castigated by a very unhappy Superior Court judge in CA for her office withholding exculpatory evidence. Judge fined CalFire and State $30,000,000, and awarded it to Sierra Pacific Ind. after SPI had negotiated a land trade to reduce their pre trial settlement to the timberland and about $50,000,000. The state court revelation came after the settlement and thus was not appealable.
Only New Mexico residents have ever been paid by Congress for losses from federal prescribed fire gone astray. In a run up to mid term elections. As a rider to an “emergency” appropriation by Defense Dept for aid to Ukraine. HP-CC d Fire started in April 2022. Bill to pay victims signed Sept 30, 2022, the last day of fiscal 2022. By the end of fiscal 2025, FEMA has forecast they will have spent about $400 MILLION to distribute $2.5 Billion. FEMA is to be our “first responder for all future national disasters.” WSJ 5/14/25. One would hope the federal bureaucracy were a tad bit more agile, timely. FEMA’s accounting forecasts spending for HP-CC fire distribution to victims costing $400 million by end of fiscal 2025, interestingly has an accounting line item for “Miscellaneous: $292,361,836.” Really?? Really???
I can sympathize with USFS personnel past and present, hip deep in good intentions, being battered by idiots elected by “the people,” with the 2, 4, 6 year election cycles now being negated by lifetime appointed federal District Court judges, 634 currently, with 43 empty positions.
There is nothing about the present construct and polarity of positions that says whether to actively protect, benignly allow “nature” to let forests and grasslands, high desert and rocks and ice do “their thing,” or dismiss the whole issue as part of transitioning….from what worked to pure fatalism.
But for federal land only, and if that demands a barren fire break around every acre of Interior or USFS land, to construct PODs to protect the private estate, just remember commerce and compromise is likely the reason we still exist as a species.
A lot going on in this piece and the excellent comments. The longer I’m retired, the less I recall, but I was in the WO legislative affairs shop when Service First and Valles Caldera were happening. What I recall most about Service First is that the setup lacked any new legislative authority, so the laws relating to each agency had to be followed–which led to employee stress in trying to implement seamless operations. We tried chipping things off the edges, and getting legislative recreation fee authority for Interior and Agriculture agencies was a big deal at the time. The downfall for Valles Caldera is that it was impossible to “run like a business”, even with huge hunting permit fees, because of wildfire costs. So the pitch was to be self governed yet subsidized by the federal government when needed.
The recent news about losing two aircraft off of the Harry S. Truman carrier reminded me of one of those amazingly unique experiences we are sometimes lucky to have in the Forest Service. When I was Deputy FS on the NFs in Florida I got to spend two days and one night on that ship off the coast of Florida, observing nighttime take offs and landings and all aspects of operations. Developing relationships among agencies like this is expensive but can pay off in the long run. The Navy had a bombing range in one of our Wilderness areas, where they would do bombing practice (don’t ask me how that came to be!). Not long after I was on the ship, a jet went down in our Wilderness, and I worked with their folks on a recovery effort they’ll never forget. Those relationships helped.
But I digress…. While on the ship, our entourage met with jet pilots from several different branches who were part of the practice operations. Pilots from the Navy, Air Force, Marines at least as I recall. I asked a question that made sense to me at the time: “If you all fly, why aren’t you in the same agency?” They had no answer, just looked at me kind of surprised I even asked. Now I imagine someone asking an ICT the same question on a fire. And the question is now before Congress in developing a new fire agency. I have reasons why it won’t work–local needs, the integration of the overall workforce, prescribed fire management, etc.
Its all hugely complicated. So I’m not surprised no one’s figured it out, though I’m glad that folks have tried. Maybe things really do need to be blown up entirely and built up from the ground again.