Lessons in Stumps

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On Mother's Day this year, I found myself camping in the middle of a clear-cut with my family, thinking about how to foster a sense of environmental stewardship in children. You may be thinking that this is some sort of radical environmental meditation, or perhaps a new form of Eco-tourism. Actually, it was neither. We set out intending to camp on this beach we found north of Reedsport, accessible by a forest service road. We were going to drive out onto the beach and camp by one of these driftwood forts along the edges of the beach. Those of you like myself who have been frustrated by state park camping and the lack of access to camp ON the Oregon Coast beaches will understand why this was such an exciting prospect. It was a grand Mother's Day plan in my opinion. But, even the best laid plans will go astray from time to time, so it's important to be flexible.

 

Sometimes we forget that we no longer have a 4WD pickup truck for camping. We were reminded right away as we started to drive the soft, deep, sandy road through the dunes, that our Subaru Forester is not a truck. Until the day that our dream V6 Toyota Tacoma extended cab pickup truck comes along, we needed to change plans. In search of a place to camp, we followed a BLM road around Tahkenitch Lake which wound through the clear-cuts along its narrow fingers. Finally the gravel road came out onto a high ridgeline and a side spur made a little circular turnaround on the very top of a hill. From there we had a complete 360-degree view of the hills, the lake, the dunes, the ocean off in the distance, and the clearcut. Likely it was once the staging area for logging equipment to haul trees up the steep slopes. The thought crossed my mind that this was not the sort of place one usually camps, but it was getting near dark, and the lack of trees did offer some pretty amazing views. So, there we pitched our tent and heated up the stew I made for dinner.

The view to the West

The rest of the view

Some folks I know would have been distraught at the idea of camping in a clearcut. Some folks I know would have been altogether indifferent. Some folks I know would have whooped and hollered, and driven their pickup truck out onto the muddy slopes and gone "stumpin". I just camped out, took it all in, and sent my children out with our dogs to explore the area. You see, I grew up around clear-cuts. My childhood home in the Olympic Mountain foothills bordered miles of private timber land which gave way to National Forest and a million acres of Olympic National Park. The clearcut was where I played.  As I grew up, I became aware of all the strong feelings and reactions that clear-cuts evoke for people. They can be barren wastelands of ecological destruction, places to target shoot and hunt wild game, crops to be managed and harvested, dwindling livelihoods, and places to take your big pickup truck out "stumpin." I suppose I have less of a reaction to them because they are so familiar. I consider myself an environmentalist, and clear-cuts are pretty horrifying, but sometimes I think it's important to take a good, close look at a thing that makes us feel outraged. Then sit around a campfire and think about it so you can go on and decide how to live life from there. As for my children, they didn't seem to give a second thought to the greater picture of our chosen camping spot, and were just happy to be camping and staying up a little later around a campfire.

In the morning, they decided they were going to hike along an iris covered ridgeline and explore the little drainage alongside it. They named their route the Dragon Trail. Upon hearing this, my view of the landscape immediately shifted to the imaginative eyes of an eight-year-old child. Looking out at the stumps for nearly as far as the eye could see, I could easily conclude that a dragon had come through breathing fire, wreaking havoc, and clearing swaths of forests in its wake. Perhaps this was what the Hobbit and his company of dwarves saw when they looked out at the valleys below Smaug's mountain lair. I realized then that this was the first time they had ever gone off to explore and get a first hand look at a clear-cut. When I was their age, I played in one nearly every day with my brother and next door neighbor. We climbed on the stumps. We made forts in the slash piles. We caught newts in the seasonal ponds created by logging equipment ruts.  All the while we had no idea what it meant in the greater ecological picture. We meant no irreverence towards the earth. In our young innocence, we held no judgements on the matter.

As a teenager, I went for walks up the logging road behind my house to sit and look out at the Straits of Juan De Fuca to sit and write and dream. I loved those logging roads and liked to imagine that they went on forever. I would always hike up the hill to this one giant cottonwood tree that the loggers had left behind. I loved that tree. It was a strong, solitary tree, and the leaves made a wonderful rustling sound in the breeze. From there I could see the water and Vancouver Island in the distance. At this point in my life, I was still without much of an ecological understanding of the world, so I just appreciated and enjoyed it for what it was. As I gathered the inspiration I needed there, I never really noticed that my dreaming spot was an uprooted forest ecosystem.

After studying Natural Resource Sciences at a university, working in ecological restoration, and having children of my own to think about passing the world on to, I feel like I have a more complex understanding of the environment. I feel a sense of responsibility for stewardship, and I try to keep a dialogue going with my children about it.  We recycle, eat local organic food, avoid using harmful chemicals, and try to live as simply as possible. I send them to outdoor programs and naturalist education classes. My children have a much more extensive environmental education than I had at their age, and yet, I wonder if their education would be somehow lacking without first hand knowledge of a clear-cut.

My daughter came back from the hike with a bouquet of Iris tenax she had picked for me as a Mother's day gift. There was something deeply beautiful about the stark ridgeline dotted with clumps of purple irises spreading their roots out to hold the soil and help more plants take hold. I felt a certain kinship with those irises. They reminded me of the way I look at environmental stewardship. I am not an activist, and I am not a pessimist. I think there is an important place in the world for those folks who go out and fight against things that aren't right. The world needs those people. There are people out there too who are really focused on all that is not right in the world. I suppose that has it's place too, as it sometimes sparks the activists to take action.  I prescribe more to a philosophy put into some eloquent words by Ghandi, which is to "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I look beyond the clearcut at the irises and feel inspired to keep moving forward. I look out at the bare hillsides covered with stumps where forests once stood, and acknowledge the new growth and hope there. I am committed to changing the world in my own small, steady way by sitting down where I am and letting my roots spread out to let other new growth and ideas take hold.

Sitka spruce, hemlock, elderberry and myrtle saplings stood taller than my children, who learned with their own eyes that morning that successional species grow, and colonize and slowly begin the work of re-creating a mature forest. There is always hope.

There are many ways one can come into an ecological understanding. Some of us live an indoor life and learn about the environment only in schools and books. Some of us are inspired by experiences in outdoor nature programs. Some of us come into strong convictions early on regarding the role of humankind as caretakers, or not, of the environment. Some of us learn about it by getting right down in it. By getting our clothes muddy and our arms scratched by blackberry vines. By standing on top of a stump that was once a tree and just observing and taking it all in. Some of us learn about it by planting a tree, and some of us learn about it by cutting down a tree to build something. There is plenty of time in our lives to study, analyze, feel, and take action. In order to develop a tangible sense of ecology, I think it's important to gain first hand experiences in nature, both pristine and disturbed. It seems to me that children should really know what a clear-cut is. We are participants in the web of life whether we realize it or not. After all, most of us in this part of the world live in houses built of wood.  If nothing else, it's good to know where it came from.

In my thinking about all of this, I was reminded of a poem written by my good friend, Thena Westfall, which was included in the 2009 Tidepools anthology in Port Angeles, Washington.

How I Became an Environmentalist

shivering in the bow of your boat, my small frame

obscured by life jacket orange, I found mercy

every Sunday from early spring to late fall

we never spoke of God, only of fish

you taught me that helping requires a firm grip

our lives wound tight against the reel

the line making tidy trips down and back

later I’d learn life is more like backlash

you pull and pull but never get it right

your Zen, dedication to predawn brisk

out here it is clean, the art of quiet

must be learned before one can observe

nature is not a picture protected by glass

as you worked the slick line fast,

knots for hooks and swivel, and I began to

understand how a forest is ancient,

how a river is never the same

that even fish deserve respect

and now I think of only salmon, struggling upstream

in search of death, each year less and less

make this journey, and it changes

to memory, yet somehow nearly everyone has tasted

salmon, but until you have raised club to wriggling temple

and committed will you really know how it tastes

-Thena Westfall