The Twilight Forest: An Elegy for Ponderosa in a Changing West

by Gary Ferguson, 2025. Hardcover, 176 pages.

With their towering, cinnamon-colored trunks and dusky green canopies, ponderosa pine has long been a charismatic icon of the American West. Yet a quiet unraveling has begun: in the past decade, in a vast area from Santa Fe to the Sierras, more than two hundred million ponderosa have died. While some trees will survive in cooler places, scientists estimate that by mid-century less than five percent of the ponderosa in the American Southwest may remain. As the very character of this vast region shifts, what will be left behind? And how can we come to terms with such profound loss?

In The Twilight Forest, Gary Ferguson brings readers on an expansive journey through the ponderosa forests of the Southwest both to mourn—and to celebrate—the forests that nurtured him. In warm and luminous storytelling, Ferguson weaves together the human and natural history of ponderosa, from its march across the West more than 10,000 years ago, to centuries of artists inspired by its dazzling stature and shady passageways. Both wildfire and climate change are constant presences on this journey. Yet the story of ponderosa reminds us that loss can be a gateway to connection—to nature and each other.

About the Author

Gary Ferguson has written for a variety of national publications, including Vanity Fair, Orion, The Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, and is the author of twenty-five books on nature and science. In March 2017 Gary’s lead essay for Orion Magazine–titled “A Deeper Boom”–was selected by the American Society of Journalists and Authors as the Best Essay of 2016. For the past twenty years, he has given keynote lectures on the ecological and psychological values of nature around the country. He is also a member of the National Geographic Lecture Series, and for ten years–from 2006-2016–was on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program, at Pacific Lutheran University.