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Initially, I intended to present my own "modest
proposal", that the State of Oregon simply elearcut the
scant remaining older growth timber in Ecola Park.
Shoot, they'd already scrounged up a good passel of the
best old growth spmee and hemlock in our area at Oswald
West State Park some years ago under the guise of "wind
Salvage". 1’he Oregon Department of Transportation
engineers, armed with some spurious data they scrambled
up in their Salem computers, sliced down all the trees
adjacent to the highway crossing Neahkahie Mountain two
years ago, obstensibly to eliminate soil slippage When
Ecola Park closed as a consequene of storm-triggered
erosion, the brain boys sitting in the parks department
think tank in Salem consulted their computers, checked
the price of pulp, and gave the chain-saw guys the go
ahead. Hell, nobody would even realize any trees had been
cut; with the gates to the park locked. Might as well
make a clean sweep of things. Take the revenue from the
trees and put in some more RV sites at Fort Stevens.
Besides, with all the clear cutting going on all around the
park by Cavenham Corporation, no one would be able to
tell the difference
My friend Vi Thompson asked me one evening at
dinner, "Peter, why do you think people want to hurt
trees? Don't they like trees?" At first, I thought she was
simply being facetious. Violet loves joshing me just to
test the waters, but she was serious. I confessed then not
to have an answer, but I've thought of her comment often.
Violet, like some others who pay attention, likes trees.
She buys sitka spruce seedlings with an eye toward
replanting the ravaged stands of our native conifers, sitka
spruce, red cedar, and Western hemlock.
"What do you do if it's your last day on earth?", she
often asks me. "Why, plant a tree, of course."
Martin Luther once said much the same tiling: "And
even if the world should end tomorrow, 1 still would plant .
my little apple tree "
I've decided to take Violet's position, and accept that
many people in our culture look on trees with disdain.
But why? To console myself, I've sought out some
motive behind the elimination of all aged, mature, and
stately trees, besides those old favorites, greed and
ignorance I've seen very young children step out of
automobiles in campgrounds, pick up an axe, and begin
hacking away at the nearest tree. The Father ol Our
Country, George Washington himself, got in Dutch for
whacking at that famous cherry tree. Abe Lincoln
thought nothing of felling a few trees in his day.
Something deeply imbedded in our cultural psyche shivers
at the prospect of dark forests, the wilderness, brooding
stands of deep timber. I've begun to think perhaps some
subtle mythic fear is operating here. Remember the
movie The Wizard of Oz? When Dorothy approached the
forest, the sty lized stage set portrayed a place dark and
fearful, threatening. In Disney movies, the most
terrifying things occur in scary lorests. Kurtz in 1 he
Heart of Darkness, Daniel Boone, J.R.R. Iolkien's
Hobbits, and scads of Grimm and other folk characters run
amok in the woods. Consider Goldilocks or
Winnie-the-Pooh stuck up that honey tree. Our
forefathers in Salem, Massachusetts thought Devil
worshippers danced in dark lorest cleanngs on moonlit
nights Indians, red devils incarnate, lived in those trees
and attacked settlements on cleared land
If that weren't bad enough, the cross Christ was
crucified on was referred to, in other times, as "the tree".
In hangin' times, the gallows was also referred to as "the
tree".
So you see, now when I walk through the trails and
roadways of my beloved Ecola Park and see the stumps
and creeks eroded by adjacent logging, I tell myself that
those who carved up the last handfuls of old spruce and
hemlock can’t help themselves. They're not greedy or
short sighted, only products of their own myths and
culture.
Soon the only place we will see old growth trees will
be golf courses and cemeteries. 1 Immm.
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