Logging Revisited

bird in tree

what kind is he

I do not know

I do not care

bird in tree’s ok by me

read on, I get sillier . . . . . .

scoop in the years

before they reach

the icy edge

old leaves released from snow

their patterns sharp

green and young—alive  

I ask the skeptic

what does it take

to make a rock float?

not my fault

chainsaw error

I see logs traveling on I-5, and lumber too, but not a sign of either in Oakridge.  Its two big sawmills have been hauled away.  I had to go west to find logging.  So I drove to Eugene in the broad Willamette Valley, far from Willamette National Forest.  

Over two decades, restrictions of logging on federal land have pushed Oregon's loggers from national forests onto private lands in the Coast Range.  I continued west into the mountains where logging trucks go empty and return loaded.  I entered the checkerboard pattern of clearcuts in various stages of maturity.

Back in my college days at Berkeley, the doctrine of Sustained Yield would be accomplished in the centuries ahead, and the method of choice for the wet forests of western Oregon was clearcutting.  You either believed in Sustained Yield or you were either a theorist or an environmentalist—both shunned.  And like most doctrines held by large numbers of acadameans, it made a lot of sense.

Instead of trying to remove selected trees from a forest, you simply cut all of them.  It followed the notion that in nature before logging, fires would periodically kill all the trees, then they would grow back.  If we control fire, the theory went, and clearcut the trees instead, then the pattern of nature will be maintained, and we get great quantities of lumber, which previously went up in smoke.

The spotted owl symbolizes the end of a doctrine.  Today, forestry literature fills with complexities of ecosystems wherein clearcutting remains an option with limited application.  To be a theorist or environmentalist and still maintain status as a forester is entirely possible today.

I drove home from the logging woods, drove in the dark and cold following the big storm of Thursday.  Salt and sand from safety-minded government flew up and coated my windshield, weakening vision.  Distinctions between trees and road and sky disintegrated into black.  The ride was a nervous one as thawed snow and ice refroze on the road as night temperature fell.  

Today I am not driving.  Rebecca was not so bubbly at the Trailhead Café, not joking with the men.  PMS, they suppose.  Presumptuous of me to judge, you say.  Yes, I judge too quickly.  Del says it takes patience; twenty years he spent to map the Free Emigrant Trail.  “I want to organize all this stuff before I leave this world,” he says.  But judging from the mess it’s in, and the age he is, I have doubts.

 Rebecca and Del might take a tip from Katrina, the waitress in International Falls, who coopted the old men at her counter.  With just a few compliments and suggestions, she had them making coffee for her and clearing tables.  And when they went out the door she said, “Love ya.”

When I get old, I intend to sit by the fire picking out favorite passages from writings of wanderers—missives from the end of some road, or a cave on a snowed-in pass, or a weeping willow in tornado alley.  I will comment as if I were there, because in most cases I have been there in some real way.  And this brings me to my favorite lines in “Riding Chili.”

“It’s raining,” I yell up to him.  “May I use your tree for a while.”  [this after he escaped from a thunderstorm to take refuge under a weeping willow in a farmyard.]

He lifts a steamy mug to his lips.  He takes a sip, looks me over, smiles.  “Why don’t you roll that thing under that carport there, and come in for a cup of coffee?”

What sort of inane remark is that, Ross!?  Do you think this farmer does not know it’s raining?  But I remember Kansas one day when lightning struck close and hail began.  I was on a bicycle in open flatland, sticking up like a lightning rod, and there by the road was a barn and a farmer in its doorway.  I rode in that barn and said almost the same thing.  These are words of one who has walked wet into a café, and snowy white into a motel lobby, and done it enough times that meek humility has become natural.  Smart often turns to smart-ass, and I wanted shelter, not recognition for intelligence.  These words are the sign of a lone traveler of humble means.

We Oregonians, survivors of our coldest storm this winter, have sent you Southern Californians our white fluff, which has turned to tears for you, and rivulets of tears as they gather babbling symphonies of some lost love.  For this we apologize, but only to the extent that your tears have not led to benefit for us all.  Today, as the elements hole me up in a warm room where listening heals, I have heard several such benefits including a poem by Russell Salamon.

Wisdom Sonata 61

I listen to rain and feel the world wars,

the used tears falling distilled in clouds.

Fifty million souls who have lost bodies

and even now thousands fall in cold

rivulets into the street--symphonies

stain their eyes as they weep. Love

not given, not stretched in tapestry

of light and small fingers on lips.

Silence inhabits trees and the wind

shakes it out; stained in silence we

listen for the heat of minds, snow

falls on mountains and rain down

near the sea, at least elements hold

us warm in houses--listening heals.

A touch springs a river into the room.

You sit near me with jokes in hands:

frogs, no it's fleas. Keep those things

off of me I am in a brittle mood--rain

is falling out of a dark time at edges

of darkness, in six seconds cities fall.

Pick up instruments and begin to play

buds to trees, kisses to lips, coming

with eyes of raindrops, seeing without

planets the always standing sunlight.