If you’ve traveled through the same Colorado (or most other western states) forests for decades, you’ve probably noticed they keep getting denser, overgrown, filled with snags and deadfall. Due to the environmental indoctrination I got at NOLS and elsewhere, I always thought that forests that dense were natural, that logging and otherwise managing for forest products was a sin, and that somehow convenient fires would clear things out once in a while. Boy, was I wrong.