08/24/95
I was driving around our
public forest roads last week - out enjoying the beautiful Smith River watershed,
just south of Eugene and north of Drain.
Eleven miles west of Interstate 5, I was driving through an old-growth reserve (LSR) and a Key Watershed, to road 20-6-35 where I knew the Summit Creek Timber Sale was. When I got there, I could see up the road a big home-made sign that said "Road Closed - Logging Traffic Only". There are no BLM road closures in this area, and logging companies can't just close public roads on their own.
It was a weekend - no logging traffic, so I went up to see what I could see. The Summit Creek timber sale was so environmentally damaging it had been stopped in 1990. This old sale of 9.5 mmbf (that's equal to 1,800 logging trucks) was one of the green healthy ancient forests that Congress mandated be clearcut by the Logging Rider - with not an inch of Riparian Reserve to protect endangered fish.
I soon came to unit one. Big Trees - laying on the ground. Big yellow stumps, flowing with fresh pitch, stood out sharply against once green branches, now drying and yellowing. I saw a new road that had been bulldozed into the top of unit 1 - going right over a little stream that still managed to trickle water in late August. This is how we are treating a LSR and Key Watershed! The destruction was awesome.
I drove up another new side-road
- about a mile or so, and came upon Unit 4. Still Standing! Wow- they have only a
month left to cut it - and they are currently shut down because of a level 4 fire
danger. I looked over the edge
of the raw new road, down the slope into a peaceful, beautiful, green ancient forest.
I listened - all was quite - no workers - only birds living and wind through the
outstretched green branches. (Two days later, Lane County changed the fire level
back to 3 - they can log now until 1:00 PM. I wonder if unit 4 is still standing.)
I continued up the main road to Units 2 and 3. I saw unit 3 from the vantage point
of facing its steep slope across another clearcut. I saw a totally brown, bare hillside.
I was too far away to see the individual stumps - but I could see the trees were
not scattered on the ground - they had been pulled (yarded) up to the top of the
unit. They were piled high on top of each other, awaiting the longest journey of
their life - a ride on a logging truck, through the open 
air,
and into the sharp steel blades that converts the green wood into green back$.
Immediately behind me was another side road, and I could see something up there -
cables and red things. I drove on up and found myself on a landing overlooking unit
2. It was shocking, as all clearcuts are when viewed up close. It was the
ugliest thing I had yet seen that day. The unit was huge - all the way to the
bottom of the mountain, and up the next one was shaved clean - nothing but stumps
and brown dying brush. Over the hills of the unit I could see wide white lines -
places where the top soil was scraped
away when the big trees had been pulled up to the landing. Most of these trees
seem to have already taken their ride to the mill. But some still remained in the
far corner of the unit, and I guess that was why the equipment was all still here.
On the landing were lots of big big heavy equipment - bulldozers,
fire trucks, yarders, and something with massive jaws that picks up the big logs
and puts them in the trucks, called a loader. There was a 30+' high tower, held in
place by a dozen cables spreading
out from the top. This is to facilitate dragging the logs over the fragile soils.
I looked in awe at the monstrous machinery, with their monstrous wheels and treads. Surely, mother earth doesn't stand a chance in the wake of such macho power. These profiteers are doing more than raping nature - they are castrating nature. The old-growth trees on the edge of the clearcut stood sturdy, towering upwards, and next to them are the bleeding stumps. This is the castrating process, the cutting off of the life force. It is ultimately self-destruction.
Scattered around the landing are more tools used in the surgery
of castration - axes, wrenches bigger than my fist - a hard hat sitting next to a
can of copenhagen. Then I spotted the saws - three chain saws resting on the landing.
Two of the saws had the longest blades I'd ever seen - as long as the wing span of
an Eagle. They were shiny and sharp like a surgeon's blade, and looked quite able
to slice through the biggest, hardest job assigned to them.
I drove away in pain, back down Smith River - once the home of millions of native fish. Now the fish are in grave danger of going extinct, primarily due to logging, according to government scientists (NMFS). My generation has witnessed this habitat destruction, our children will feel the pain of its loss the most. Their children, having never experienced these life forms, could not ever fathom what we stole from them. Losing the memory of our ancient forests will be our most tragic loss.
