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Weyerhaeuser
August 7 was an upsetting day for me. As I was riding
into the depths of Southwest Washington, leaving
behind some great people and looking ahead to a lonely
ride, I biked by a monster machine cutting down trees.
I stopped to watch. This machine was invented to get
to more trees, faster. It annoyed me how fast the
trees were being cut; they were not even trying to get
to the base of the tree so as to utilize the entire
trunk. In the four minutes I watched, six trees were
cut and laid to rest. It made me think of a movie
based on Diana Young's story called Fern Gully, The
Last Rain Forest. I saw it for the first time in
Juneau with Zoe and Joe, and I loved it and think
everyone should watch it, old and young.
I thought about the replanting of these areas.
Weyerhaeuser boasts that they manage their lands under
the principles of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative
(SFI). However, one of SFI's objectives is to maintain
healthy forests. To me, a healthy forest is a diverse
one. The replanting that I've seen here in this area
looks as though just one family or even just one
species of tree has been replanted. To think the
complete solution is replanting one single kind of
tree, planted so uniformly, with no diversity, needs
to be reconsidered. Without diversity, an entire
forest would be susceptible to a single fungus or
insect such as the Mountain Pine Beetle. I also
wonder, as I have lots of time to, about the tree
stumps and roots that remain after a clear cut. They
certainly don't decompose as fast as the growth and
clear cut of third and fourth generation trees, so how
long before the land is just completely filled with
dead and decomposing tree stumps, still not composted
enough to be tilled into the soil?
I see this and realize that I demand this to be
happening. I demand the paper bag, I demand the paper,
the furniture, the heat, the books. Watching this
makes me not want to buy or use another paper product,
but what is my choice? Petroleum. I certainly don't
want to demand that either. It is such a tough thing
to think about constantly. We all get kind of numb to
where our products and services come from because if
we weren't numbed from these realities, we would all
go a little crazy - like I am now, trying to find the
right answers.
One issue that makes it tough is that the public is
not being provided with feasible and very possible
alternatives. Instead, these realities are covered
up. The facts of where this or that product came from
is not the focus. The focus by advertisers is YOU NEED
THIS PRODUCT. To a certain degree, it is our fault to
believe it, but it's also marketing and we begin to
think we need some things when we really just want
them.
It is sad to watch this. I thought about taking a
picture but I didn't have a camera. Nevertheless, I
don't think I needed to take a picture of this as it
is burned in my memory and will be there for a long
time to come, at least until I become numb again.
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