Here’s a shiny relic from the dawn of man!
A man, meaning me, semi-professionally.
This is an investigative story penned when I first leapt into bizz as a freelancer, seeking to report on big Mama Earth issues. It was first printed 45 years (or eons) ago—yet the piece now seems to gain an appallingly fresh resonance.
Because again, authoritarians snatch power who hold near-zero regard for planetary health. They don’t grasp that social and environmental justice stem from maintaining rules and guidelines on matters which affect us all. Either that, or they simply don’t give a fig… Or, they actively condemn such values.
Well, what DO they seem to prize? Vindictive punishment of their supposed foes as well as their own fiscal ease. And that last item by far the most.
Way, way back in the day, by which I mean once upon a time, people, as a society and culture, we did appear poised to blend blooming technical prowess and earth’s ancient organic ways in one prosperous balance.
May we reach such a tipping point again and ultimately surpass it. And I mean, heading in the correct direction this time.
Before I retell a tale, allow me to say: I ain’t one of those people who tries to claim that the hippies were right about everything!
Only almost everything.
TWO TALES FROM THE TIMBER TRADE
The site was a small residential lot in Redway, a town near Garberville, just a few sedate miles away from Highway 101. Making this site special were trees: stately old-growth redwoods that soared up to dwarf the homes scattered in their cool shadows. The O’Kane family ran an ad to sell the parcel here.
The man who answered it seemed likeable and sincere. He introduced himself—Walt Wilkinson of Miranda, a town about ten miles north. Said he’d done some carpentry and wanted to put a house on this lot as an investment.
That land had been in the O’Kane family for three generations. Val and Rhonda O’Kane loved it. But they’d also grown aware that a stiff requirement for a septic permit meant they’d need to sell this lot in order to finance their own home-building hopes elsewhere. Walt said handling septic issues would pose no problem. He owned the equipment to put in the right fill, and by the way, would it be okay to take down a couple of trees to make room for a foundation?
Val told him to contact the powers-that-be, since strict county ordinances governed tree-cutting in any residential area. He promised he would. And the O’Kanes felt happy they’d found a buyer with both desire and means to use this land carefully. Walt’s down payment was accepted and escrow closed on April 27, 1978.
BULLISH ‘DOZERS ON PARADE
On June 1st, a Thursday, the equipment of logger Carl Richardson clanked up to the lot. Timber fallers ascended those thick and shaggy redwood trunks and began to drop limbs—a first step in the process by which living trees become board feet. The joint echo of Richardson’s trilling chainsaws also was an alarm clock, awakening residents. The North Coast’s heaviest industry had dropped by their neighborhood for a highly consequential visit.
By Friday, local arousal and confusion began to shape up into a reaction. People of varying beliefs and appearances crowded the perimeter to engage in spirited shouting matches with the loggers and between each other. Meanwhile, some realtors and residents bounded back and forth between the Humboldt County sheriff’s station and offices for county planning and the California Division of Forestry (CDF), trying to find out if this travesty had been properly permitted, and seeking to get it halted.
The logger Richardson, hired by Wilkinson, maintained he simply was clearing land for a homesite. Yet no record of a permit to launch such construction existed. What there was—dated and filed on May 16—was a CDF Exemption that removed a need to file a Timber Harvest Plan. And this Exemption was promptly granted since the parcel was less than three acres. It meant Richardson and Wilkinson could cut down as many trees as they liked.
That afternoon, as opposition grew, a hurried conference was held at the Garberville sheriff’s station. Present were: Stan Gold from county planning; various law officers; the logger Richardson; plus one Mike Selfin, a forester who was not yet fully licensed by the CDF. They discussed a core problem: that THP Exemption in no way overrode county ordinances banning commercial timber harvests in residential zones.
TO CRAFT A CRAFTY MEMO
After numerous telephone consultations, it was found that logging could continue if a loophole in those ordinances was utilized. The loophole permitted cutting down “diseased or dangerous trees.” Forester Mike Selfin’s affidavit, signed before state and county offices shut down for the weekend, read: “In light of recent wind damage to personal property by wind-blown trees in and about the town of Redway, as well as throughout Humboldt County, it is my opinion that the trees on Ap 77-073-05 in the most part because of there (sic) height and size are potentially dangerous to the adjacent property and the main county road traversed by many people traveling this area.”
Val O’Kane told me, with more awe than bitterness in his voice, that in his family’s memory no tree had ever fallen on that lot, and in the mighty windstorms that hit the North Coast over Christmas, perhaps a single limb came down. A “high-climber” or topper who scaled the trees for the loggers was overheard to say that these redwoods were about the healthiest he’d seen.
Well, there wasn’t a strong wind on Saturday, June 3, yet limbs dropped furiously and fast. Next, a large trunk was felled. Someone finally let the O’Kanes know about what was happening on this lot—where, despite the down-payment, they still owned a two-thirds interest. They quickly drove out to see. And discovered the site was now a scene of logger and environmentalist counter-demonstrations. Which swiftly were shifting toward an outdoor, group session of primal-scream therapy.
Attendees included homeowners and local tree-huggers, sheriff’s deputies, highway patrolmen (CHP), area Realtors and old-time loggers who came to applaud or criticize the delicate expertise needed to fall huge trees that reared up amid houses, roads and powerlines.
The O’Kanes desperately sought to contact officials of the closed county offices. They tried both arguing and reasoning with Richardson, even offered to buy back Wilkinson’s interest in the land—all to no avail. As tensions heightened at the site, ripples of antagonistic and sympathetic reaction spread. And immense and venerable redwoods continued to crash to the ground.
TO OPERATE WITH NO RESTRAINTS
When Monday arrived, the O’Kanes finally won a trio of retaining orders, on grounds that this operation laid waste to land in which they still held a dominant fiscal interest. Rhonda served one on Richardson at the site, while Val drove off to hand another to Wilkinson—if he could find him—and award the third to a lumber mill planning to buy the logs.
Richardson flung his order in the dirt and strolled away from it. Meanwhile, the sheriff’s department told Rhonda they couldn’t enforce any restraining order until or unless they got another order that ordered them to do it. The cutting continued.
Rhonda O’Kane is a slight, soft-spoken woman. It’s rather difficult to believe what she did next. However, an intensity of feeling in her eyes belies that gentle manner. She drove her car up under the next tree slated to be chopped down, switched it off, threw her keys into the brush. She sat there inside and refused to exit—despite yells of “Get out of here, bitch!” and “Drop a limb on her!”
Rhonda found herself physically dragged out and away by a CHP trooper who scolded her for breaking the law and informed her that he was simply trying to protect her. When she demanded to know why he couldn’t enforce the law against loggers as well, and force them to comply with the restraining order, that highway patrolman paused. The affair took a different turn. He intervened with the loggers, and their operation ground to a halt.
Chainsaws remained silent most of Tuesday. But that afternoon, a lawyer for Wilkinson handed a check for the balance owed on the land to an attorney retained by the O’Kanes, and the last lever they had on the situation seemed to dissolve. At week’s end, the clearcutting was over. Eighteen large stumps were left surrounded by acres of barren and dusty ground.
PARABLE OF A PROBABLE PLAGUE
Still, it had been a great week for Walt Wilkinson. He’d paid just $18,500 for the lot, and rumored profits from his timber sale were upwards of $50,000. After the show was over, a “For Sale” sign was posted on a stump. Confronted by someone who demanded to know if that cleared lot was now to be resold, the logger Richardson chortled. “No, no, just must be that stump,” he joked.
Later, another sign got posted at the site. It read: “Quarantined: The disease is GREED.”
A week later, the Humboldt County Supervisors locked the barn door of that loophole in their ordinance—the one Richardson and Wilkinson had discovered was big enough to drive a logging truck through. And CDF tightened the requirements for certifying the presence of “diseased or dangerous” trees.
Meantime, the loggers, in a flourish of callous indifference, dumped the slash and debris from their harvest on a bank of the Eel River where the next rains would push it in—adding to problems of the second-fastest eroding watershed in the world. The loggers were cited by the state Department of Fish & Game, but that charge was later dropped. In its place, the Water Quality Control Board issued a clean-up and abatement order that had to be obeyed before next winter.
A COIN’S FLIP SIDE
Here’s another story. It also comes from deep within the California woods. But it conveys a much different vision of what natural resources truly are and how they ought to be handled.
The Albion River flows to the ocean off the North Coast about 70 miles south of Redway as a raven flies (much further on seriously winding roads if one must drive). And down here in the summer of 1979, a crew of locals could be seen struggling to restore that stream to free-flowing health through many days of ardent and arduous labor.
By any measure, the Albion’s forked and writhing corridor was ravaged by old-school logging’s heedless ways. Not many miles from this river’s mouth and far up into her tributaries, giant jams of logs and debris dumped in the river blocked its currents from flowing down… and its fish and wildlife from easy transit in any direction.
In addition, behind these dams of detritus, silt gushed in from overcut banks and poorly-built roads to cover and choke the spawning gravels of native steelhead and salmon. In many places, the bottom of the riverbed became yards higher than it was decades ago.
IF SALMON PERISH, OUR PEOPLE SHALL NOT LIVE
The health of salmon and steelhead runs forms an excellent marker for the health of an entire North Coast watershed. Down at the Albion River mouth, on the docks where fishermen gather in the dimly-lit fog of early morning, there was constant talk of a looming “disaster” in their industry. Some described the way the runs seemed to shrink year after year. Old-timers joked with black humor about the number of boats put up for sale at each season’s end.
However, a change was in the wind. A man named Ron Kusina, working at the Mendocino County Manpower Office, figured out a way to use employment stimulus on a project to restore the Albion River’s ecologic health.
Kusina acquired a grant of $35,000 from the Governor’s Discretionary Fund and applied it to his novel idea. Whereupon, a crew of dedicated locals sought to stretch those dollars as far as they would go—to bring natural vigor back to the Albion. It was picked for two reasons: the river was thought nearly salvageable; and public support for the project seemed good.
It turned out to be even better than that. Two skilled craftsmen with a broad range of working experience, Vern Clark and Jesse James, were selected as managers. They speedily assembled local crews from an oversupply of applicants. The people who showed up hoped for jobs, sure. They also wanted a chance to perform tasks that improved the ecosystem of their neighborhood. Picking up gloves and tools on the first day shift were men with hair both long and short, women and a mix of local teenagers.
Their work of clearing riparian debris was dirty, slow and often brutal, and their earned pay remarkably low. Yet the job also seemed meaningful, so it held the interest of those involved for a whole summer.
Ron Kusina told me with quiet pride that only one of sixteen teenagers involved via an adjunct youth program had quit before her time was up. And he said another kid had been overheard saying that because of the safety measures required, they all were truly learning what it meant to work well together.
PAID IN PRIDE & EMPOWERMENT
Jesse James said, “These people are proud of the fact that they can do something that looks impossible: taking apart these huge logjams by hand. It gives them one hell of a shot of confidence.”
Clark added, “It’s not just performance of a job, it’s participation in a remarkable training program.”
To my eyes, that training included both the handling of tools and a discovery of how it feels to live in accord with a vision. Watching these crews at work, I saw men and women stand hip-deep in cold, murky water for hours, manhandling weighty hunks of soggy wood as they tugged tangled puzzles of logjams apart.
While they worked, they joked and laughed and grunted. Snatches of rock songs were sung, comedy albums quoted. Sexism in job assignments was indicted, discussed, and solved. Women demonstrated they could ably wield roaring chainsaws and use peavies, cant hooks or pry bars.
Fresh partnerships formed around the removal of particularly troublesome pieces. And gradually a trickle of water began to flow through a spot where it had once been blocked for decades, if not a century, by accumulated debris and silt.
Cooperation, creativity and sheer enthusiasm stretched the effects of that first grant quite a ways. Of course, as James noted, you’ve got to be creative when your tool budget for such a vast project totals around $240. Some pieces of gear were owned and loaned by locals, some borrowed from resource agencies like CDF and Fish & Game. A major coup was a D-7 bulldozer that the county’s Regional Occupation Center donated to haul out logs far too hefty for human hands to handle.
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP
Interestingly, cooperation also cropped up from Masonite Corporation itself. This timber company had become a major landowner in the Albion watershed in the 1940s. The firm began by allowing people—once they knew they were insured by the project—to begin work on their land. But once they saw how well things could go, the company offered one of its own Caterpillar ‘dozers to help clear the jams.
Henry Gulbranson, Masonite’s senior forester for this region says he’s an angler who enjoys casting a line into a healthy waterway, himself. He explained the company’s reasoning.
“Masonite now cuts to achieve sustained yield all along the Albion River. You may see some peaks and valleys in harvests, but in general this means our flow of material equals its growth. Which means we can’t just go out and chop logs, we have to plan at the same time for regeneration and reforestation.
“Six years ago, Masonite had three people here to work on managing harvest and reforestation. Now, there are over two dozen, full time. We hope the general attitude of our whole industry will expand to consider these aspects. The old days of mining the resource without putting anything back are long gone. Watching out for water quality, fish runs, bird life, all of that’s got to be part of the change.”
AT TIMES A GREAT NOTION
Hardly anyone outside the timber industry understands the courage and skill required to fall timber. They only know that the practice of this craft doesn’t tend to produce a breed of men who are fond of other people telling them how to do their work. Particularly if those others happen to be urban folk who lobby to save trees yet also complain about the cost of redwood boards used for their house paneling or hot tubs.
Laws have been passed to control erosion and overcutting, and to protect streams. But even if by some miracle the rules end up completely observed or enforced, it still would never be quite as good as having the spirit behind such measures vitalize the consciousness and actions of those who supply wood, and those who create the demand for it.
Nothing exists apart from anything else. The two parables above were about logging. They might easily have come from other parts of a resource-extraction economy that has created for human civilization a period of supposed wealth. As technological societies, we’ve gained awesome powers over our environment.
Such power can magnify our every move, reflect consequences of our desires, etch upon the landscape each nuance of our attitudes. And not much untrammeled marine or terrestrial wilderness is left to buffer our mistakes.
BLAZING A PATH FORWARD
We can destroy a thing through indifference, as occurred on the Albion River. We can also destroy a thing by paying entirely too much attention to it. Witness the circus of conflicting values over farming versus fishing issues on the Klamath River, or the swelling invasion of any scene of natural beauty by those tin dinosaurs of conspicuous consumption—our massive, carbon-fuel-swilling recreational vehicles.
We have already demonstrated our power to alter the face of the earth, yet we’ve barely grasped how much responsibility should march in step with it.
Economy and ecology are precisely the same issue. Resources are renewable only if they are fully and properly renewed. We can no longer afford to treat topsoil like dirt. It’s all very well to talk about jobs and empowerment, but what if an industry, like timber or agriculture, begins to strangle another, such as salmon trolling?
Stopgap measures like logjam removal and fish-rearing ponds mitigate some damages, but no solution will be as effective as involving all parties in committing long term to restoring a healthy watershed that supports many kinds of wise use—the sort of thriving ecosystem that can be the only real and enduring bequest to our future.
For now, it is perhaps okay for public funds to go to repair the damage from private gain; that at least reveals a need for repair has been noted. However, a time shall come, and arrive soon, when our earth’s natural economy will force a far better bargain to be struck. Or else.
Remember, once a widespread community existed of much earlier settlers than ourselves. We conquered and displaced them to convert most of their land to our use. Prior to that, they had lived with a cultural attitude that if you took anything from the earth, you gave back to her in the same measure, and you never sought to take excessively, nor waste a gift. And they lived in a state of plenty for a very long time.
