Submitted by Xiaoshun Zeng
on
Professor Lynn Thomas was featured in a UW News article about the recent screening of the documentary The Maple Cutter. The film was produced by Professor Lynn Thomas along with Professor Danny Hoffman (Jackson School of International Studies) and Mr. Michael Sanderson (lawyer and photographer).
In 2018, the Maple Fire burned more than 3000 acres of Washington State’s Olympic National Forest, making national news. Federal prosecutors alleged that a local man, Justin Wilke, started the blaze while removing a beehive at the base of a tree he planned to steal. Wilke, prosecutors claimed, is a tree poacher. Late that summer night, Wilke was in pursuit of figured Big Leaf Maple, a rare wood coveted by guitar makers, when things went horribly wrong.
The Maple Cutter, a documentary from Unthinkable Films, is about Wilke’s complex relationship with the woods and the equally complex way that Wilke explains that relationship – to the world and himself. Wilke’s is a story of addiction, nostalgia, nature, and work in rural America. It is also a story about how people love and live through forests today.