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Migration Discoveries by Quynn
Each summer I close up classes in Tucson, pack up my van/house and take off North. Why? To learn to understand the state of the Nature of the west and become familiar with the condition of this land‘s “public lands“.
While my genetics are from somewhere else, I was born and raised in the northland of the west, and I have come to notice that the state of the lands around me are undergoing much change in my lifetime. I figure, since my genetic ancestors actively participated in, even created, the precarious situation we have in the not-so-wild-lands around us, the least I can do is to learn enough to possibly speak for the trees, fish, bear and beaver. Idealistic? Strange? Maybe, but I feel called to do this, and so, instead of focusing on creating a stock portfolio, I exist with simple solar electricity for months, I take bucket showers, and I “camp” in the back-country deserts, river valleys and ’managed forests’.
So much is changing so quickly. I remember the first time I drove highway 101 over the Olympic Peninsula. My heart sank as I traveled through miles and miles of overt clearcuts, many cut down in the “glorious Reagan years”. Some are growing back at a trees pace, some, not. I am overwhelmed by the acres of graveyards of 700 year old stumps, decaying slowly.
I remember the time in northern Utah when, to hide from the intense mid-day heat, I pulled onto some state land with only a couple of wispy Junipers to provide shade, and no water to be seen. When the sun cooled I walked and found a gathering of beehive shaped smelters, quite large actually, along with some dilapidated turn-of-the-century buildings. I was shocked. For these smelters to be here (and remnants of many cow, I might add), there had to have been many trees here as well. To smelt metal in the old days, one needed to burn wood, and lots of it. The trees, and the water, were sucked up long ago, but by looking today, you’d never know they were once there. Very strange.
I think the strangest is the modern concept of a ‘managed forest’. Tree farms are what most folks today call ‘forests’ throughout the west. Young non-fire resistant trees way too close together, beckoning beetle and flame. This is not just the case in the northwest, young trees are giving way in Montana, British Columbia, California, northern Arizona, and even Mt. Lemmon. How can we help, and not hurt the forests we have left any more than we already have? This is the question for our future. What created this problem was greed. “If we make room for more trees, we’ll make more money!” Maybe this belief will last as long as “they” do, maybe not, but from what I’ve seen, what has been done in the last 100 years play out in the next 100. The next generations will have to learn what is best.
So, it all sounds depressing, huh? Well, my reaction to all this is...
MAKE ART ABOUT IT! Process it, Feel it and Share it without falling into depression about it. What is done is done, but the future is not the past. We can do something different. The Earth needs us to.
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