BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
Massage Center
2868 Willamette Street, in South Eugene
e i
Appointments: 868-1575
ag
s
as
Walk-Ins Welcome!
m
l
a
Mon-Sat: 10 am – 8 pm
on
Sunday: Noon – 5 pm
ssi
Pro
fe
q
na
uie
t,
tem
co n
p o ra r y
environment
$10 OFF!
Introductory one hour
relaxation massage for just
$49 or $10 off any one hour
upgraded massage service
One coupon per customer, one-time use only, off er good for your fi rst massage at BodyJaz only
Give a Gift Card
Some Trees Go To Heaven
Logged urban trees can have happy endings
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a follow-up
to our cover story on Eugene’s urban forest
Nov. 21.
A
rborists and city workers in
Eugene have been cleaning up
fallen trees and limbs and check-
ing out possible arboreal hazards all over
Eugene following the Northwest’s early
December storm. Many urban trees wind up
as wood chips or firewood, but some trees
get reused in local art and architecture.
The city of Eugene has a contract with
Buena Vista Arbor Care for removal of street
trees. Removed trees are first offered to
wood carvers or other people who want to
recycle it into art or sculpture, says Pricilla
Esplin of Buena Vista. If no one wants the
tree, it’s made into firewood for community
members who need it.
The wood from trees such as black wal-
nut, oak, maple and other high quality hard-
woods can sell for thousands of dollars, but
there is no real market for urban trees, as they
are more prone to having foreign objects like
nails in them that could damage a saw blade.
Urban trees also come to the market more
randomly than those from a full-scale logging
operation, making them difficult to sell. But
urban trees can still be valuable.
Kurt Hupé calls himself a wood artist and
a tree salvager. When he finds out that one of
A
for you
Good things come in small packages!
2800 Gateway
Springfi eld, OR
(Gateway Mall, Facing I-5)
541•461•5501
Mon-Sat: 10am - 9pm
Sunday: 11am - 6pm
HomeStores are independently owned and operated. © 2007 Ashley HomeStores, Ltd.
14 DECEMBER 13, 2007
that are going to be cut down to make way
for a building and turns them into a part of
that building.
“The wood didn’t come from a tree plan-
tation, the National Forest or the Brazilian
rainforest,” he says. For owners who are
often upset when an urban tree needs to be
cut, it’s a way to not waste the wood or per-
‘The wood didn’t come from a tree
plantation, the National Forest
or the Brazilian
rainforest.’
— P ONY G ILBERT ,
L ONG T OM C USTOM
S AWMILL
gift
Trellis made by Pony Gilbert
Eugene’s street trees is due to be logged and
the owners don’t want to keep it for them-
selves, he asks for pieces of the tree to sal-
vage and make into bowls and sculptures. He
says recycling urban trees is a “gift econ-
omy” with the wood being exchanged for his
art. Some of the art he gives back to the prop-
erty owners, many of whom had emotional
attachments to the trees.
When a bigleaf maple in front of the
PeaceHealth Nurse Midwifery Birth Center
was declared a hazard and had to be re-
moved, Hupé offered to turn the wood into
“placenta bowls” to give back to the center.
Hupé was inspired to begin recycling the
urban forest by Don Colt, owner of Scotty’s
Hardwood. Scotty’s Hardwood, like
Springfield’s Urban Lumber Company and
London Lumber Inc. of Cottage Grove, re-
cycles the urban forest into everything from
coffee tables to fireplace mantles.
Pony Gilbert, who owns and operates the
Long Tom Custom Sawmill, takes urban
trees and mills them onsite into just about
anything the property owner wants, keeping
“the unique shapes and designs” of the natu-
ral wood. He takes hazardous trees or trees
Bowl by
Kurt Hupé
manently lose that tree. “Their environmen-
tal ideals are being brought into their homes
in a very tangible way,” Gilbert says.
Projects include a hazardous chestnut
tree whose removal was pictured in a recent
EW cover story (11/21). Gilbert was dis-
mayed at the idea people would think that
tree was simply being made into firewood,
when in fact the property owners arranged
for it to saved and made into flooring for a
home.
One of his current projects is construct-
ing the LCC Native American Longhouse
out of donated timber. Gilbert is Native
American and danced at the recent LCC
Powwow. Long Tom Custom Sawmill has
also worked on the Lowell Covered Bridge
and transformed countless hazardous trees
into cabins, porches and wood façades over
otherwise conventional homes.
Gilbert, Hupé and other timber recyclers
take pride in turning the by-products of
Eugene’s street trees into items that are both
beautiful and useful as well as environmen-
tally conscious. “Nobody wakes up in the
morning wanting to rape and pillage the
urban forest,” says Gilbert.
ew