12/23 -

Today they started logging down beside “my” trees near the sacred meadow where I sing and pray and do ceremony.  It was heartbreaking once again, every time they fall and hit the ground I ache so deeply.  I cried and cried, then heard the Grandfather telling me to go get my drum.  I did, singing my way down the path from my cabin, praying for the trees in this continual taking of my friends.  I stood on the edge to bid them farewell where the huge machine was cutting them down quickly, praying for their spirits, thanking them again.  He took half a dozen large old trees, all of them at least 75 years old and clustered together as a family.  I drummed and prayed, drummed and prayed.

                                                                                                                                                 

He finished logging this part, turned off the machine, and came walking over to me with another man.  It is interesting to stand firm when you don’t really know who is approaching, and you clearly have different ideas about what should be happening to the trees and the land.  I stopped drumming as he approached and he said “Hi, how are you?”  I said “I am deeply sad that this is happening,  I love these trees.”  

He talked about logging, “harvesting the resource” as he put it, and I talked about the big trees that were leaving that had nothing to do with the health of the forest, just money alone.  I told him I had lightly thinned my own woods when I found out that the trees were all too skinny and had only 10% canopy when they need 30% - 50% to be healthy.  It had been an agonizing decision, but I had learned that there was no undergrowth because the trees were too crowded, and they were growing into tall pencils that could topple easily in storms.  If there is little canopy, there is little root system to hold them to the earth.  I know that stewarding the land doesn’t mean just watching it, it means caring for it, tending it well.  The forest is healthier, the animals have undergrowth and grassy meadows, and it has been an act of love and commitment to care for the land this dearly.

We carried on a respectful discussion, a good conversation, each of us understanding the other and listening to each other.  Then his father, the boss of the operation, walked up.  This was not the same discussion, his father was a jerk.

Clearly looking for confrontation and hammering his point home, I finally told him that we were just never going to agree, that these were living, breathing souls to me, not just “resources,” and that I was extremely sad to see them come down.

After he left the the son said that it WAS hard to take some of those big old trees down and we talked about that for awhile.  It is just such a different world.  We talked about the clear cutting they will do down below and he said “They’re only hardwoods down there mostly,” and I told him that I take photos of those beautiful maples in the fall and as the canopy greens up in spring, they are much more to me than useful lumber or scrap wood.  He said he understood, and we both commented that it was good to be able to talk reasonably with someone when you disagree.  He said they run into all types of folks and wanted to make sure I stayed out of the way and didn’t intend to vandalize their equipment, etc.  I told him that I am a “peacenik” and just love the trees, that’s why I was there.  It was quite a talk, and once again, the world is not as black and white as I choose to paint it when I am angry or in sorrow.  It is important not to demonize him, he is a good man.

I come back home and realize how utterly exhausted I am.  It is hard bearing witness sometimes.  It feels important to sing and drum them out respectfully, and I know my prayers are felt.  I pray now for the straggling ones left behind when all around them are gone.  May they make it through the winters ahead.