The Rambling Boy
Home is here, but Astoria's got us beat in trees and storms
By LONN TAYLOR
For the past couple of years my wife and I have gone up to the Pacific Northwest to spend January and February house-sitting for a cousin of my wife’s who lives near her home town of Astoria, Oregon. We are not going to do that this year. There are several reasons for this decision, among which is the fact that last year we started to get homesick for the Chihuahua Desert after only two weeks of rain and mist, but the principal reason is that we have already missed the storm.
On December 1, 2, and 3, Astoria was hit by the most powerful Pacific storm in more than a century. Winds of 120 miles per hour were recorded at the Cape Disappointment Coast Guard Station, 70-foot high waves pounded the coast, the town was without power for four days, and the local daily newspaper missed publication for the first time since the great fire of 1922. Trees that were 200 years old were blown down like matchsticks. One of my wife’s acquaintances had 26 trees fall on his house. He and his wife were trapped inside for four days because rescuers had to cut their way through 600 downed trees that were blocking the road to his house.
My wife is a typical Astorian in that she revels in Pacific storms. For years she has told me about the Columbus Day storm of 1962, when her mother led her and her little sister on their hands and knees down a wind-swept sidewalk to a neighbor’s house when the roof of their own house started to lift away from its moorings. Two years ago, during what I now realize was just a mild blow, we went to the observation deck of the visitor center at Cape Disappointment to watch huge waves crashing over the jetties at the mouth of the Columbia River. My wife was in ecstasy. Now she has missed out on the really big one and her stories of the Columbus Day storm will no longer cut any ice with her Astoria friends. The Columbus Day storm is no longer the Big Blow.
What makes Northwest Coast storms distinctive is the trees. West Texans have no conception of how many trees there are in western Oregon and Washington, or of how tall they are. Firs, hemlocks, larches, pines, and spruce dominate the landscape, and they are all considerably more than 100 feet tall. In some places they grow right down to the ocean’s edge. Storms whip their branches off and then snap the trunks as though they were toothpicks. The aerial photographs of the damage around Astoria look like pictures of the Mount St. Helen’s eruption. Bare tree trunks are scattered across the landscape as if a giant had dropped several cartons of telephone poles on it. You would not want to be on the ground when those trees came down. One of the storm’s arboreal victims was a 700-year old Sitka spruce near Astoria that was 206 feet high and 56 feet in circumference, the largest specimen in the United States.
Trees and logging are as much a part of the culture of the Northwest as cattle and cowboys are here. Tree houses are a common roadside attraction. This phrase does not mean houses built in the branches of trees but houses cut into hollowed-out sections of tree trunks. Some of them have several rooms. Children learn a song about a waitress who says, “I knew you were a logger / And not a common bum / Because no one but a logger / Stirs his coffee with his thumb,” and little girls tease each other by saying they will grow up to marry a logger from Elsie. Every local museum is full of crosscut saws, iron wedges, and photographs of loggers standing triumphantly on the stumps of huge trees. In Long Beach, Washington, where my wife and I have spent the past two winters, there is an outdoor mural commemorating a local photographer that includes the words, “You’re not a logger until you’ve got a dollar watch and had your picture taken with a tree.” Log trucks are one of the hazards of daily driving.
By contrast, West Texas is largely treeless. There is an old joke about West Texas being the only place in the world where cowboys making a camp had to climb for water and dig for wood, meaning that they had to climb up a cistern for their water and grub up mesquite roots in order to build a fire. I went to college at T.C.U. with a boy who claimed he came from a town called No Trees. For years I thought he was joking and then I moved to the Big Bend and discovered that there really was such a place just a little west of Odessa. I detoured through there one day on a trip home from Midland and sure enough, there are no trees there, at least none of any size, and 50 years ago I’ll bet there were none at all.
Old photographs of Marfa, Fort Davis, and Alpine show completely treeless urban landscapes with not a leaf in sight. The trees that grace the yards in these towns have all been grown from seed or transplanted from somewhere else. Of course, there were trees in the Davis Mountains and in the Sierra Vieja, pinyon and ponderosa pine and even aspen and dog-toothed maples, probably considerably more than there are now. The army at Fort Davis consumed an enormous amount of wood for cooking, heating, and various steam-powered devices, and by the time they left in 1891 they had pretty much denuded the lower slopes of the Davis Mountains. The flats where Marfa, Alpine, and Fort Davis stand were bare as goose eggs before the settlers arrived. A few years ago there was a minor flap in Marfa when the architects in charge of the courthouse restoration recommended removing the trees from the courthouse square in the interest of historical accuracy. A local lady protested the removal by chaining herself to one of the trees with a dog leash. The Big Bend Sentinel ended its account of the incident with the succinct statement that “there are no trees native to Marfa.”
So we have decided to stay in Fort Davis this winter. The gusty, dusty winds of February and March will not equal those of the Pacific storms that delight my wife, but at least no trees will fall on us here.
Lonn Taylor is a historian and writer who lives in Fort Davis. He can be reached at taylorw@fortdavis.net.
Letters to the Editor
Editor:
The Big Bend Veterans for Peace invite residents of the Big Bend and visitors to the region to share in a silent vigil in memory of the lives lost since the initial dedication of Arlington Southwest, four miles east of Alpine on Hwy 90, on Martin Luther King Day, January 21, 2008, at sunrise, from 7:30 a.m. – 9 a.m.
The memorial is to the consequences of war, in particular to all those who have died during the occupation of Iraq.
We chose sunrise because, as the sun comes over the eastern ridge, the first sunlight of the day hits the tombstones squarely on their faces and they absolutely glow against the landscape. The effect, as phrased by Mark Battista, one of the artists designing the installation, “will be briefly spiritual and cosmic.”
Hot cocoa, coffee and cookies will be provided.
Sincerely,
Big Bend Veterans for Peace
Chapter 151
Alpine
Editor:
On behalf of the Presidio County Chaplaincy Ministry and the prisoners held in our county jail, I want to thank all who helped with the Chaplain’s Christmas Card Ministry in 2007.
Each prisoner was given three Christmas Cards to send to family and/or friends, and with the help of many who contributed for postage, these cards were mailed out on December 17.
Many prisoners expressed their gratitude for being able to participate in the Christmas holidays.
Thank you again for your generosity.
Edward Jennings, Chaplain
Presidio County Sheriff’s Office
Editor:
We invite all those in Big Bend who believe the river should unite us with Mexico and its citizens rather than dividing us to join in a press conference and peaceful demonstration against the border wall on January 23, 2008, at 3:30 p.m. on the public sidewalk adjacent to the Paisano Hotel in Marfa.
Homeland Security is beginning construction of the border wall immediately. Landowners who do not voluntarily comply with requests to allow government surveyors on their lands for determining the path of the wall have been issued notices that the government is taking them to federal court. In many cases the lands to be condemned are aboriginal lands protected by treaty. People will be cut off by the wall from their water rights. An ugly eight-foot steel wall (www.notexasborderwall.com) will destroy river habitat. Claims that this border wall is the way to protect the U.S. from terrorism or drugs or undocumented crossings are unsubstantiated.
Following the Big Bend No Border Wall Coalition press conference, Homeland Security will have an Open House in the Paisano Hotel which is hosted by their contracting environmental out-sourcing company. Statements will be taken by a stenographer or may be handed in to a company representative. This is not a government hearing where we can expect to be heard within the building.
Therefore, we will be heard outside.
Bring signs that show your view of the need for the border wall. Mine says "NO BORDER WALL".
Although the wall has been approved by Congress for the entire northern and southern border of the U.S., it has not been completely funded. Senators Hutchinson and Cornyn have actually backed down a small bit in their support. They will notice us if we speak out publicly and in sufficient numbers.
Please join us,
Adrienne Evans,
Terlingua
Eve Trook
Alpine
Editor:
What is Fascism?
1. Constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Example: flags are seen everywhere and on clothing.
You must glorify war to get the public to accept the fact that their sons and daughters are going to die. The right-wing front group claims "multi-culturalism" threatens U.S.
2. Failure to protect human rights while convincing people to look the other way and approve torture, summary execution, assassination, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
One of the worst things you will ever read about your government.
3. Using identification of enemies and scapegoats as way as a unifying cause to rally people into a frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities, liberals, communists, socialists, terrorists, etc. Fox radio host suggest putting liberal commentators and activists in concentration camps.
4. The military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military services are glamorized.
Bush lobbies congress to have the funds saved from his veto of children's health care to be spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. The $45.9 billion for children's health care will push the war bill over $600 billion.
5. The governments tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated, traditional gender roles are made more rigid, opposition to abortion and anti-gay sentiment is high, and abortion and anti-gay legislation becomes national policy.
Bush calls for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages and refuses to sign U.N. proposal on women's "sexual" rights.
6. Sometimes mass media is directly controlled by the government, and other times it is controlled indirectly by government regulation. Censorship is very common.
Reports shows U.S. government has been engaged in illegal propaganda aimed at its own citizens and the story gets only 41 mentions in the media.
7. Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Bush's aides admit 'stoking fear' for political fear. The Bush administration puts the US on high alert even when the evidence for a terrorist attack is flimsy. Cheney warns that we will be attacked if John Kerry is elected president. The list goes on.
8. Governments use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion.
NC congressman proposes law making it okay to preach politics in the pulpit. Critics claim there are alarmingly close links between the Bush administration, the Republican establishment and the right-wing Christians.
9. Corporate power is protected because they put the government leaders in power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
Since Bush took office, the federal government has awarded more than $3 billion in contracts to the President's elite 2004 fundraisers, their business and lobbying clients.
10. Labor power is suppressed because labor is the only real threat to a fascist government. Labor unions are either eliminated entirely or severely suppressed.
Bush vows to veto anti-terror security bill if it allows airport screeners to unionize. The labor department has warned unions against using their money politically. Congress and Department of Labor are trying to change rules on overtime pay, eliminating the 40-hour work week, taking eligibility for overtime away from millions of workers.
11. Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education and academia.
60 top US scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents, accused Bush of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes.
12. Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws and people are often willing to overlook police abuses and forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism.
The US has become the world's leader in its rate of incarceration, locking up its citizens at five to eight times the rate of other industrialized nations.
13. Cronyism and corruption is rampant because fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions.
Big Iran-Contra felons get good jobs under Bush. Big Iraq reconstruction contracts went to big donors. US Coalition Provisional Authority lost $9 billion and contracting after the hurricanes has been marked by waste, corruption and cronyism.
14. Elections are manipulated by smear campaigns or character assassination of the opposition candidates: Remember Max Cleland of Georgia, a Vietnam hero who Bush called a traitor in 2002 because he had the nerve to criticize Bush.
The use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries and manipulation of the media.
Fascist nations use judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
Rolling Stone did exhaustive digging into public documents and reports: "We're almost guaranteed the 2004 election results were massively rigged.”
Are we already a fascist nation? If not, we are uncomfortably close. Add this to the fact that China owns our future, and we can see that the survival of American is in danger.
Thank you,
Joyce Wright
Alpine
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