Sisters, OregonBrittle pine needles and twigs snap under Don Grandorff’s boots as he crunches his way through Deschutes National Forest, the August air scented with sap and wildfire smoke. Without hesitating, he veers off the path and wades through the brush, on the hunt for Ponderosa pine seeds.

Grandorff has been a seed forager for 45 years, and he spots the signs of a squirrel’s hidden cache immediately: clusters of green pine needles fanned out on the forest floor; a newly nibbled cone; and a long, shallow dirt trail that disappears under a log.

He points to the canopy, where a gap in the needles at the tip of the branches reveal that a squirrel has been through. “Most people don’t seem to