In the early 1960's when Kelly Mosley began to direct his attention to land use and management issues connected with his family property in Alabama, the country was entering a period of conflict and disunity.  For people in the forestry and natural resources community this was also a time of  questioning and controversy.

The forest products industry questioned the accuracy of the Forest Service supply and demand projections.  So, the Southern Forest Resource Analysis was commissioned by a group of  forestry associations.  The findings of the analysis, published in  The South's Third Forest, raised questions about the productivity of the southern forest, especially forestland owned by non-industrial private owners.  Environmentalists wondered if this concern was not just a pretext for more "pine monoculture," to be produced by clear cutting and planting.  Foresters questioned whether practices such as clear cutting, prescribed burning, and vegetation control through herbicides could be successfully applied to small tracts of forest land.

There was an unfortunate tendency for foresters and other concerned groups to adopt extreme opinions on such questions as whether to employ even-aged or uneven-aged management or to regenerate stands by artificial or natural means.  Each party in the controversy had useful  insights and valid points to offer.  Thus the environmentalist, who was critical of site exposure, disrupted ecology, and loss of aesthetic values resulting from clearcutting, performed a useful service.  The forest renewal oriented forester, who was equally critical of unreasonable attempts to institute a single use of excessive amounts of land, was right to criticize.

However, the extreme attitudes of one school of thought goaded adherents of opposing doctrines to seek equally extreme positions, and affirmation of each party was ultimately weakened by the  character of its denials.  Elton Trueblood, a Quaker and famous religious philosopher, said, "In much of our practical life, error is neither patent absurdity nor obvious falsehood.  For the most part, error is truth out of context.  It is truth in isolation from other truths." As long as each party in the controversy was willing to end simply by being critical of opposite extremes, the gain for the public good would be negligible.  Such was the atmosphere in which Kelly Mosley began to ask his own questions about wise use of his family inheritance, Pineland, a small tract of not quite one thousand acres of Alabama forest and swamp land.  And, largely due to his tenacity in pursuing and recognizing truth from whatever quarter, Pineland became "a common meeting ground" for diverse views, a significant test case of whether there could be a meeting of minds over how to wisely use and renew our forests and natural resources.