Abused Forest Healing
Blue skies gave way to clouds and dark forest as we climbed the mountain. Once, chainsaws, logging trucks, and burly men crawled in and around the trees choosing the cream of the crop for destinations in far away cities and towns. Now, the forest sits in solitude as it once existed in primeval splendor.
Nature has been upended here, but not destroyed. It regenerates in multi-shades of greenery — lichen, moss, ferns, mushrooms all crawling over everything and everywhere.
The decaying tree trunks lie like pick-up sticks, crisscrossing each other every which way. The wet bark disintegrates with a touch. Footprints remain only briefly in the deep, soft forest carpet.
This forest was so remote and unfamiliar to me, I felt like I was a foreigner in an unknown far away land. I thought of settlers coming west in covered wagons and wondered how they had crossed the forest. Of course, then it was a forest where most every tree stood tall and firm and only the old ones decayed and fell across the forest floor. I thought once again how humans had used, tamed, and abused mother nature in their quest for I’m still not sure what.
Later, back in the light away from the dark forest which held so much life it could not feel gloomy to me, I look up at another mountain from a beautifully landscaped garden and listen to the sounds from a chainsaw, gunshots, rolling thunder, and the gentle drops of persistent rain mixing together in my ears. Conflict, the juxtapositioning of the unlikely, surround me as they did in the forest of life and death.
Tags: logging, rainforests, Travel, Washington
