In the early days of really hard economic situation and shortage of everything people where cutting some trees – that’s true, but everybody took special care to not harm the forest beyond the recognition. Yes, there were places where you could see the trees cut.

Fast forward to 2005, it was time of so called economic progress and things were looking much better than back in 1993 winter. I visited some of the places where I used to grow and back in 1999 where still more-less nice. What surprised me was that it took me several minutes to recognise where am I. The forest was not there, nothing, just emptiness …

I think it was not the economic hard-ship that made the forest disappear, but the greed of people who where actually coming and cutting the forest to sell. They were not local village folk, but so-called new armenian businessmen.