1/21 –

Sweet memory of trees.

I raised my hand in prayer as I drove home by the clear cut tonight, light shining through the trees, the sillouettes of straggling survivors along the road, and the eery light of clear cut land where a forest used to be.

I thought of my neighbors, the people I have been trying to find compassion for, the ones I trusted to steward the beautiful land of our homes, the people who destroyed it.

The words “They have lost their way” came to me in a song, my heart softened, and I can say that for the first time in this month-long siege, I began to feel an empathy, a sense of what must lie heavy on their hearts and minds, the sheer weight they carry from the havoc they have wrought here.

I stood out on the deck, facing the clear cut and the decimated path I used to walk and sing my way down, unrecognizable now, a war zone.  I prayed once again for the spirits of the trees and animals taken, and, setting my anger and deep, deep sadness aside, I prayed for my neighbors, freely, at long last.  I sensed their sorrow on some level, and offered prayers for the ones who must live with this decision, the wanton destruction of habitat and home.

I came inside and began to listen to my voice mail messages.  The first voice was my neighbor’s, full of shock and remorse.  We have not spoken since it began.  “I feel like I have harmed something very sacred, that I defiled it,” he said, and he has.  He apologized for how “horrifying” it looks, hoping for re-growth in the spring, deep regret filling every word, every pause, as he struggled to convey his recognition of the devastation he has caused.

I will meet him there tomorrow, where the trees once stood.  I will tell him the truth of my experience since the logging began, how truly agonizing and heart wrenching this horror has been.

And I will listen for a greater God, a guide, to bring two deeply saddened spirits into some accord, some understanding of this nightmare and all its implications, some way to find a resting place at the ending of the storm.

I have made horrible choices in my life before and hurt the ones I loved.  None of us are immune in this human state.  How interesting it is that he called tonight, the night I began to find forgiveness, the night he came asking for it.

1/16 -

Everywhere I go these days, the trees are never far from my heart.  This is a poem I wrote last night after seeing two painted owls up on the walls as we were eating lunch in town at a restaurant.  I know I won't see the owls again, here in the woods where we have all nested.

Lost

  

Two painted white owls spread snowy wings 

in the center of black plates hanging at the restaurant –

and I remember the great brown soul

who sat, still, high up in the branches

and watched me pass, staying as I stopped

to see him fully, fully seen.  They will come

no more, for there are no trees, all of us

blinded in the broad bright expanse

where earthen pilgrims stood, silent-winged.

1/14 -

Here, in the midst of mud and machines, lies a forest.

I went into Molalla yesterday for a William Stafford reading.  He is perhaps Oregon's most famous poet laureate, writing much about nature, and beautiful daily ways to see the world.  I loved his poems.  My friend Kate read one of his and a terrific poem of her own, and Paulann Peterson, Oregon's current poet laureate, spoke eloquently about Stafford while sharing his work and her poetry as well.  Local folks read their own works, bringing up their notebooks of sacred poems to the podium, each person clearly moved by words and wanting so to say it, to share it.  They also brought personal artwork and related it to Stafford poems.  It was quite a gathering.

Here is a poem I wrote after two people spoke and shared their art about logging in the Molalla area, how they see it as what has built this entire community.  I see it as something different.

A William Stafford Reading – Nan Collie

 She has painted a solitary ice skater, under a lemon moon, on a saw.

She tells us all about the feel of ice droplets freezing in mid air,

landing on the hardened pond, turning skaters into gliding light-winged fairies.

Then she tells us of the saw, the history of this region,

proud of logging heritage, the foundation of community,

speaking in such reverence.  She has painted on a saw.

Another man has printed Stafford poems on his photos,

beautiful shots of the Grand Canyon, and a baby blue jay

he has nursed, fallen from its nest, now ready to fly. 

Clearly touched by nature, his last piece is an old logging photo,

men posed and proud, perched on piles of logs, a legacy, all that is left

of old growth forests.  He has printed Stafford on the logging of a hillside.

They speak of generational footsteps here on the land.  I recognize

that I am foreign, moving here two decades ago to be among the trees.

I have no wish to take their lives and level landscapes.  

How does pure blue sky live on the blade of a “hard working” saw?

How does a sepia snapshot of destruction sit in the same conversation

next to the golden mile-high walls of a carving Colorado river?

I am baffled, I ache.  I see the same scene here at home, the trees all taken,

leaving only spirits, the trampled remains of squirrels and birds and ferns.

Nothing proud here in my eyes, no skating on the saws that have taken down my friends.

1/9 -

Vertical to horizontal.

1/9 –   

A small redheaded woodpecker darts

overhead, zig-zagging across to perch

on the edge of the clear cut.

He squawks and talks and swears at them

like I do, complaining loudly

to the thieves of the forest.

And I wonder, do birds know sorrow?

There was still a man with a chainsaw working all week-end, when I had longed for quiet and a break from the logging.  In a little over a week he has felled his way clear across the valley down below my neighbor’s, and is cutting the maples and fir below “my” land today. 

I vow not to stay down there this time, it breaks my heart too much, but I have also promised to stand by the trees through all of this.  You do not leave your comrades in the middle of a war. 

Startled once again as the trees come down, I yell and swear at the logger, drowned out by the chainsaw and the ever-present droning of the machines.  I feel such anger, and ultimately, such powerlessness to make it stop.  Then the tears come and I am so deeply saddened by this continual loss of loved ones.

I pray to the trees, lying down below, leaving this valley forever.  A century tree came down today, as I was walking down my path nearby.  I prayed during the cutting, I wept when it fell.  Huge old maples shattered as they hit the ground, and the man with the chainsaw moved on, to the next one, as if they meant nothing. 

I say “Namaste” to each one as they come down and know they mean everything.

And where do the deer go now... 

...when the earth is mangled beyond recognition?

The gazebo before...

...and now.

Remembering the trees in happier times.

1/6 -

My friend, Kate, says "You sound sad," and I say "I am."  After hanging up the phone I realize again that my friends are dying every day.  I am sad.

It was quiet yesterday, but they are back at it again today, clear cutting some towering firs and many, many maples.  They are almost downy in the winter, soft and thick from a distance, a blanket of light brown branches covering this side of the valley.  They nestle all around such wonderfully tall, straight firs, rising above it all, sentries of the forest.  They will be all gone by the end of next week.

I drive out to meet my poet friends for a rehearsal, practicing for our poetry/photography program coming in a month.  There are many beautiful stands of trees along the way - I see them, falling.  I am, indeed, sad.

1/5/12 -

I have added photos to the blog (thank you for your help Erin).  I have taken them while still shocked in disbelief that this is really happening, here, on the land I love so dearly.  If "A picture is worth a thousand words," may these photos say all there is of raping the land and taking life so thoughtlessly, so ruthlessly.

All of these shots were taken during the week before the logging started, and in the time since the devastation began.  I will remember their great beauty, in pictures, in my heart always.

Walking the woods in the weeks leading up to the logging, it was hard to imagine what would come, how the landscape would truly be demolished.  I shot their pictures, blue stripes signifying they would be taken, and sang and prayed to warn them of the coming destruction.  I honor them now, the blue striped warriors of the woods, I will never forget what has happened here.

1/3 -

I light candles and hope to remember what is pure and good, in the midst of what is not.

They are continuing to clear cut all the trees down below today.  I know the sound now of maples splintering, broken branches shattering as they land upon their brothers and sisters.  I know when it is a fir or hemlock coming down, each wide, wrinkled trunk smashing into a grieving mother earth.

I talked with my friend, Judy, yesterday, another woman who loves nature and walks among the trees with grace and reverence.  She has stayed here, in my home, on the land, and I realized that there are many others who are saddened by the onslaught here.  Several friends have come to camp in the summer, singing songs in the meadow, serenading the trees with sweet marimba music, hiking on the trails.  I am not alone in this.

I’m used to tending things myself here, and have tried to be an ally, a witness for the woods as the beautiful trees come down.  Judy and my friend, Terri, have offered to come hold ceremony here, in support of the tree spirits, standing and fallen, in support of me in these days of sorrow, this leveling of a forest.

I spoke with Judy about my neighbor’s honest belief that he is “taking care of his family” by logging the land.  She pointed out that he has forgotten that he is part of a bigger family, the family of all living beings on the planet.  It is a spiritual issue, and in our arrogance, our perceived need of more and more, we plunder the earth and believe these to be OUR resources, forgetting that we share the land with many, many more, each needing food and shelter, each in need of home.

What do we teach our children in the taking of the trees?  That this is the way we build up bank accounts, killing off the beauty of the very land that has held and nurtured us?  That when the money is gone we rob the mother?  As a people we simply cannot go on stealing finite oil and coal, water and forest resources forever.

I have been poor.  I have made bad financial choices.  I bought a shiny new car and got strapped for payments.  I’ve enjoyed “things” and worried later when the VISA bill came due.  I drive a car and burn up fossil fuels.  I heat my home with propane and electricity, and yes, the occasional wood stove fire.  I write these words out first before they find the computer, enjoying the feel of pen and ink sliding over paper.  I consume.

Each of us must ask the question of ourselves:  What is essential, and what is the cost, in energy, in resources?  Watching the trees fall is pause for thought - I am part of the consumption, I must be part of the consciousness that cares for the land, that thinks about these things.

I will fly to Ashley’s (my partner’s kind and thoughtful daughter) graduation this spring in Indiana.  I will fly again to DC in June to be with another bright-light daughter and her family, I have to see those cutie-pie grand daughters!  We can’t undo the progress of airplanes, and I am happy to get to go see them, but again, what is the cost?  I won’t see the oil wells that feed this plane, the pipelines that run through land that used to sit pristine and undisturbed.  Seat belted in, I will anticipate joyful reunions with this family I love.  For now, I wonder at my part.

When I return home, flying in over the checkerboard patchwork of forests left in the hills and mountains of Oregon, my Oregon, the place where I was born and have lived all of my 60 years, I will know the story of each bird and frog and ferret.  I know the cost close-up, here on the land I call home.  I have seen it for 2 weeks now; the trees come down one by one, the earth shudders, and I cry inside for all our losses. 

1/1/12 -
I am going back through my blog, deleting the names of my neighbors who have logged the land here, the forests of home.

With time, and a couple days of break from the constant sound of falling trees, I have realized that this writing is not truly meant to be a vendetta against my neighbors.  It is about a much bigger picture, and my hopes that there is some illumination in these words that brings the disconnect between people and the earth home in a deep and honest way.

It is cause for concern, whether it is the rain forests of Brazil or the forests of Beavercreek, our willingness as a people to level whole breathing entities without regards to the great gorillas, smooth black satin panthers, or the tiniest brown and gold salamanders wriggling through fir needles after a good spring rain.  We are destroying habitat for animals as we are destroying the wild in ourselves.

These places live in us when we take our children hiking, camping, introducing them to the beauty of nature, the wonder of trees.  We smile as they see their first take-your-breath-away waterfall buried deep in a forest, or the stunning leaps of dark red salmon spawning upriver in a right of passage as old and ancient as the trees, all of us, going home to some deep calling.

Native peoples speak of "The Seventh Generation," and how we must consider the children of the future, seven generations from now, as we make decisions affecting the land, the waters, the air and earth we share with so many.  I had looked forward to the day I might take my partner's grandchildren for long walks in the woods when they came to visit, the woods that now lie stripped and naked.  They will never know how beautiful it was here and what has been lost.  It is gone forever.

The planet is in peril, global warming and carbon emissions a fact, proven over and over to all but the most entrenched deniers of science.  If we watch the trees fall silently, are we not accomplices to this great imbalance?  If we do not ache when a forest is cleared, we have lost our most basic connection to the earth, the sea water in our veins that bleeds black oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the barely breathable air that hovers gray and dense as fog over Peking, Mexico City and Los Angeles.

Children sit in front of screens all day and only know of towering redwoods from calendars and post cards, never witnessing the astonishing miracle, their centuries old splendor reaching clear into the sky.  You must walk among them to truly know their magnificence.  You must rise up early in the woods to hear the first sweet birdsong of waking mornings.  You must sit still among them, nearly dry in the rain under a canopy of woven branches to feel and trust the nature of their shelter.

This is what I weep for, this is what I pray for.  May these words land where they are needed, may we all become keepers of the forests, recognizing every tree as holy.  Whether it stands budding between city streets, some small vestige of the great forests, or rises among the tall cedars, fir and pine, each one a gift that brings us back to the earth, the roots of where we come from.

Blessings on the trees, the ones who breathe us still, the ones who now lie in the mill yards.  May we love the tall green friends who live near and in each of us.  In loving them, we become holy ourselves.