I think that I shall never see...
by Victoria Stoppiello
unavailable, 19th century coastal settlers found
themselves limited to a diet consisting almost
exclusively of salmon and potatoes.
Complaints about the strict salmon and potato diet
appear in north coast settlers, diaries more
consistently than any other sort of hassle, I find.
This mundane diet was viewed as a serious
impediment to white settlement: "No w onder people
did not want to settle here where they had to live on
salmon and potatoes" Tillamook Bay settler, Warren
Vaughn complained, years later. When boats
arrived, settlers would purchase as much lood as
possible, but once these provisions ran out they "had
to resort to salmon and potatoes again." Punchy Irom
the isolation and drenching rains, these settlers
fitfully confronted their spud-centric diet with
alternating desperation and humor. Amidst rumors
of Tillamook Indian unrest, settlers built barricades,
admitting only those people who knew the secret
password: "salmon and potatoes." They drank
"coffee" made from ground and charred potatoes.
When w'ild storms kept supply boats away lor long
periods, they began to eat their seed potatoes,
knowing that without the next year’s potato crop
their settlement might ultimately fail altogether. Only
the arrival of hybrid crops and better transportation,
many years later, brought the north coast’s Potato
Period to an end. The salmon have declined, still,
they are here and they yet lots of press coverage.
There is little, however, to remind us of this
profoundly spud-centric phase in north coast history.
We may detect subtle hints of it as we stand in line at
the grocery store or behold local musical talent, yet it
would be a stretch to call these things
"commemorative" in any traditional sense. Perhaps
commemoration is warranted. Today, we depend on
food which is shipped, abundantly and predictably,
from places more suited to agriculture than the upper
left coast. This Thanksgiving, you can choose
whether you eat the potatoes presented to you, or
you leave them sitting there on the plate.
Be thankful.
Plants come from places. Every ornamental plant
or food crop is descended Irom some wild ancestor,
growing somewhere in the world, attuned to its local
climate and soils. When plants arc moved beyond
their home range and planted in our own home town,
this creates all sorts of problems. If its home range
is very different than our own, we have to partially
recreate the plant’s native conditions. Most food
crops which were cultivated in North America prior
to the arrival of Europeans, including corn, beans,
squash, and peppers originated in the high hills of
central Mexico. Regardless of whether they are old
varieties or new, when we grow these plants in our
own gardens we have to make them feel at home. 11
the plant is not grown in Mexico, a little bit of
Mexico must be brought to the plant on the Oregon
coast, this means clearing brush, providing plenty of
sunlight, fertilizing the soil, and avoiding frosts.
Without constant human help, these crops could
never grow on the upper left coast. But with enough
imported soil, artificial light, temperature controls,
and other environmental modifications, you could
grow tomatoes commercially on the surface of the
moon. Or even in Canada.
When plants are moved between dissimilar
environments without these artificial improvements,
there are problems. People who have moved from
one place to another in a hurry have learned this
lesson the hard way. The Cajuns originated centuries
ago from French settlers in eastern Canada, the
British, viewing this French population as a security
nsk deported them en masse to the French territories
of Louisiana. When living in Canada, these ancestral
Cajuns had been productive agriculturalists, growing
crops suited to the f rigid temperatures and glacial
soils of that region. Forcibly relocated into
subtropical swamps, the fcxTd plants they brought
with them promptly died, the Cajuns were sent
scrambling into the forests and bayous to lorage for
food. This explains in large part why Cajun cuisine
includes so few' vegetables and so many
invertebrates, reptiles, and amphibians. The same
general process was at work when pilgrims were
bailed out by local Native Americans on the east
coast. This is why your Thanksgiving meal contains
very few Old World foods, and looks vaguely like a
sampler plate of the more palatable staple plant and
animal foods of the Native Americans of eastern
North America. (Among the many things to be
thankful for this season is that Native Americans
were there to turn white folk on to these foods, and
that they were not, like the Cajuns, forced to rely on
invertebrates, reptiles, and amphibians.
Thanksgiving dinner might have become an
altogether different experience, a time of gathering
with one’s friends and family to consume crayfish
and frog parts. On the upper left coast, such meals
are quite popular among raccoons. However, they
would probably not fly as human holiday fare.)
When the earliest settlers moved to the coastal
Northwest, the same environmental winnowing, of
crop plants took place. This preceded the creation of
hybrid crops, and most crop plants introduced from
other parts of North America failed amidst the coast’s
leached soils, dense forests, and wet wet weather.
By harvest time, green tomatoes rotted on the vine;
half-formed w heat kernels mildewed on the stalk.
Only potatoes thrived - a crop from the high Andes
of South America, potatoes were suited to the coast’s
cool temperatures and drizzle like few other crop
plants. While natural factors shaped north coast
settlers, diets, cultural factors were important too:
settlers tended to be prudish in their use of unfamiliar
foods, and resisted consuming large quantities of
local berries and shellfish until their situations
became dire. Thus, the native peoples of this coast
had enjoyed an abundant and diverse diet, but white
settlers did not. When supply boats were
Our tent appears to be quivering. Quinault lake
light glimmers on its surface and on the ancient cedars
around us, trees hundreds of feet tall. The
campground is quiet. A marbled murrelet pushes a
glowing sphere of light before it on the lake surface,
leaving a streak to aft, now breaking into a series of
glowing marbles, now a streak again. The mountains
on the south shore are an outline of curvaceous
lumps, coated with forest. Old growth trees form
ragged patches above their younger neighbors.
My companions are in awe of the big trees here and
1 am re-appreciating them. 1 grew up with trees like
these, often on log trucks. My stepfather was a
gyppo logger, with his brother and father, a Swedish
immigrant. During the fifties Carl, however, left an
ancient grove near Olney. He had bought a section
and logged all the alder and second growth, but near
the farmhouse and beyond the orchard was a gully full
of giants, only big trees, oxalis carpeting the ground,
truly a late succession forest. Not enough light
reached the soil to allow any underbrush. Those were
the kind of trees Carl's father found on arriving fifty
years earlier; those were the kind of trees the
nineteenth century loggers believed would never end.
Those were the first spectacular trees 1 remember
seeing, and I also remember the reverence with which
Carl brought us to walk among them. Later in life 1
experienced other magnificent trees: the redwoods of
course, including the silliness of driving through a
living specimen in a car; kauri trees in New Zealand, a
few remnants left, ramrod straight, their kin logged
for ship masts and lumber; and bristle cone pines,
eking out an existence in a place summer never seems
to reach. Little grows at their feet, a high altitude
desert where the quiet is eerie, only the wind moving
through the pines' gnarled branches. The bristle
cones have suffered the ignominy of having one of
their oldest members felled in order to count its rings,
to determine that it had been the oldest living thing
known at the time.
There are giant tulip poplars and beeches in the
Joyce Kilmer Reserve in North Carolina, the bald
cypress in Four Hole Swamp in South Carolina.
These were old growth spared by their logger-
owners. Like Carl, they saw something beyond profit
in those big old trees. Now those groves are tounst
attractions, especially for easterners and Europeans
who have long since lost their forests to logging,
industry, and tree farms.
Much later I sought out Carl's wonderful grove on
that old farmstead near Olney. They've been stumps
now for twenty years or more. Someone else, more
rapacious than Carl, with less sensitivity to the
mystery, beauty, and history of the woods, took
them. Made a lot of money from them. Felt they
owned them, had "the right of disposal," a principle
of western civilization that separates us from the
indigenous peoples of this continent.
My half sister inherited 45 acres of second growth
woodlands from her father Carl who had inherited
them from his uncle Joe. She's trying not to log those
trees, now 77 years old, in order that her sons will
have some big old trees when they're old themselves.
This in spite of a divorce that strains her financial
limits. That was interesting, too, to have the courts
evaluate the forest only on the basis of its potential
board feet of lumber. Nothing about the beauty,
quiet, protection for the spring, habitat for deer and
pileated woodpeckers, or hiding places for playing
kids.
Usually the ones who voluntarily save forests are
persons with great wealth, who we believe can
"afford" to do it. But it's all a matter of degree. 1
can't "afford" a Mercedes, but does that mean I can't
afford a car? Some who can afford to save a patch of
forest, cut it all and then express their philanthropy
some other way, like Simon Benson and his water
fountains in downtown Portland. However,
philanthropy of any kind is becoming rare, and we
live in a time when water fountains are commonplace
but low elevation old growth forests are not.
L etterpress P rin tin g
in th e A r ts & C r a fis S ty le
■ ■ ■
H a n d p r in te d n o te c a r d » , b oo k » a n d s t a tio n e r y
it e m s u s in g tu r n -o f-tb e -c e n tu r y te c h n iq u e s a n d
e q u ip m e n t in t b e t r a d it io n o f t b e b a n d c r a ftsm a n .
Introducing four new cards depicting tbe bounty ol
tbe garden, designed by Hard Hunter in 1910.
Hand printed in three colors on pale green
paper tipped in paprika-red window card.
A box of 4 with matching envelopes,
$14.00 postpaid. VISA/MC/DISC
C a ll or w rite for a catalog of
prints, cards and books.
CRANBERRY
Post Office Box 94
Oystervillc, Washington 98641
360-665-6278 • E-mail: mark@roycrofter.com
See more cards and books on our website at http://www.aone.com/-mnero
Senators and Congressmen please hear the call,
don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block off the hall.
O m m -J«B
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