Day 14: In which I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him

ONE (1):



This is the Tillamook Burn. The Tillamook Burn can refer to two things: 1) the 1933 fire that swept through what is now known as the Tillamook State Forest, or 2) the four fires (1933, 1939, 1945, 1951) that swept through roughly the same area every six years. The fires destroyed a combined total of 355,000 acres. The first fire took out the old growth (trees that were nearly, if not over, 500 years old). The next three fires destroyed any replanting that had taken place in the meantime.

Now, of course, the forest is all verdant and bower-y. They replanted: over 72 million seedlings planted by hand and by helicopter. A massive undertaking. The forest has been open for business ever since.

Right now, I want you to divorce yourself from any happy, dappy feelings you have about the forest. Stop trying to reconnect with your Scottish Irish Lakota Sioux German Barbarian history or wander romantically off into The Wilderness. The forests you so dreamily walk through and prize for their clean air and silence are the giant green supermarkets of the modern world. What we're looking at and walking through is carefully planned and managed by hundreds of people in different organizations, primarily recreation, timber and environmental agencies. These people form joint committees and discuss the placement of trails and hemlock.

Nothing is left to chance, or at least very little is.

We don't even know what a real forest looks like. We do know what a managed forest looks like: every forest you have probably ever stepped foot in. Even private forests. It's a giant garden, just as tidy as a tomato field.

I'm not sure how to feel about this and I don't know why. It's amazing how complex our society is. We have an entire web of organizations debating the placement of a single educational sign while another thousand committees are determining the placement of a trail. They are also debating whether or not it should be called a trail based on who they want to be using it, where it will be in relation to other possible trails, and it goes on.

Crazy.

Anyway, there will be a news article soon. Sometime next week probably. Cassandra Profita will be writing the actual scandalous, in-depth reporting on important issues. I'll be giving a general overview which will be as based in fact as I can humanly make it.

Educate yourselves.

TWO (2):

F.Scott Fitzgerald said that the very rich are not like you or me. I'm covering the Miss Oregon Pageant this weekend (by which I mean, Tomorrow). I intend to paraphrase that quote frequently and rashly, if only in my mind.