Our Community's Own Stories - 2011

“Good Job!” - Dianne Roth, Corvallis

Two misshapen juniper trees had to come out. My son brought his chain saw. We looked up and down, here and there.

I bet him I could pinpoint just where the tip of the tree would fall. He laughed and I marched away from the tree, stopping several times to bend over, looking between my legs until I could see the top of the tree. I placed a marker stick at the exact spot. He rolled his eyes.

He aimed and started the saw. Within minutes he had a wedge cut and was coming in behind. The tree wavered and began to fall. His aim was perfect and the tip of that juniper landed on the very spot I marked.

We laughed, high-fived, and patted each other on the back. We wore our arrogance proudly. We were good!

The second tree was leaning a bit toward my house, but hey...we were good!

The wedge was made and I "measured" where the tip would land. As he began to cut, it was clear we were in trouble. We tied a climbing rope between the tree and the truck. I kept a hair-trigger foot on the clutch. He cut a fraction at a time. I kept the rope taut. It was slow, harrowing. The tree wrestled the rope. It began to fall, my son ran, I gunned the engine. The tree swung nearly horizontal, pulled away from the house and landed safely... nowhere near my marker.

We held each other for a long time. “Good job!”

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Well Earned Warmth – Bruce Marbin, Corvallis

Starting in the 70s, for about eight years, we heated our house exclusively with wood, which meant a constant search for inexpensive or free fuel. I always had my eye out for hardwood that was part of a clear cut. Sometimes I would find maple and oak, but mostly fir limbs were left behind. One August I was offered “all you can cut” from land outside of town. These were not huge trees, mostly small ash and maple. I invited several friends who wanted firewood and who had chainsaws and a large flatbed truck.

I was the smallest and least hardy of the guys: the others worked in the forest. I was exhausted after the first hour of hard labor. As we proceeded to saw, cut, chop, and pile, a ram and several ewes appeared. The ram was very interested in our activity. One of the bigger guys, who had energy to spare, decided to be funny by lowering his head and taunting the ram – and then actually knocking his head against the ram’s. The ram was surprised and scampered away. We all had a good laugh, with lots of jokes about the guy being a bonehead. We took a lunch break and then went back to loading wood.

Of course, a little while later when we were all tossing wood onto the truck, the ram appeared again. We didn’t pay much attention to him and just kept loading the wood. When our backs were turned, the ram charged his nemesis, hitting him square in the rear – knocking him over! The ram proudly backed up and was ready to charge again. We all jumped into the truck and waited for him to wander away.

By sunset, we climbed back into the cab of the truck and made our way home with well-earned warmth for winter.

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This poem by my mother meant so much to me when we were stationed in North Dakota. I love the feeling of being surrounded by hillsides of evergreens. - Louise Johnson, Albany

Homesick Morning - Leona Worth, deceased

Your letter said “our valley
Is closed in fog today”,
And on those words
My heart went home
A continent away,
To silver misted mornings
In a world so small
A child’s voice could span it,
Or a robin’s call—
A garden world, suspended
In a luminous cocoon,
Spun of veiled hush
And evergreen. Write soon
Again . . . your letter brings,
Like tears against my face,
The river mists of Oregon .
Now, this stark winter place
Cannot defeat my spirit
That has been home to rest
A moment where the child sang
To the bright bird in its nest.

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Trees of Hope - Jon Anderson, We live close to Corvallis. I have a business selling seeds of native plants and use the income to stay involved with reforestation and erosion control efforts in Haiti.

In 1990 I was working in Haiti with hillside farmers. When greeted and asked what I was carrying, I would reply, “Hope!” and reach into a bag of tree seeds I carried on my shoulder. I explained how to plant them and what the trees could do for them and their land if they cared for the seedlings and allowed them to grow.

The year began with great hope as rains fell often and farmers planted more than usual with the hope of great harvests. Before the crops matured a serious drought fell upon the region, the crops withered and died. The tree seedlings from the seeds I had given out, died as well. One farmer named Racius showed me how he kept his seedlings alive by planting them at the base of banana transplants. As the dry days continued week after week most of the springs where people gathered their water for drinking and washing dried up.

At the height of the drought, I visited a 120 acre peninsula called Morne Bwa Pin that jutted out into the Bay of Acul. That rocky piece of ground had been so eroded that it wasn’t farmed. A mission hospital bought the land 15 years earlier and began to cover it with tree seedlings. I found that people from a nearby village were sneaking onto that reforested land to gather water from a spring. The spring had never been there in their memory but now, in this year of drought when their usual water sources were gone, they were able to get water from land that had been renewed by trees. The story of the spring that came back to life and Racius’s trick for getting seedlings established has been told many times to many people to inspire hope.

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The Little Christmas Forest - John Lopez Jr., Corvallis

The sign on the boulevard just around the corner from my house read, “Christmas Trees Fresh From Washington and Oregon”. It was December of 1957 and I was ten years old. A usually vacant suburban Los Angeles lot full of pointy trees was an extraordinary place to me. The evergreens -- feathery Douglas Fir and sturdy Silver Tip -- were arranged in tight rows and set up on crossboard stands.

One night under large, colorful Christmas tree lights strung between giant candy canes, me and my neighborhood pals scurried past customers who sought out their Christmas centerpiece in the chilly night air, fragrant with evergreen. Once the game of tag began, I crouched, concealed in the wilds of that vast timberland, then dodged whoever was “it”, my sneakers flicking up the sawdust ground cover. I crawled under the largest trees, bunny-hopped over the smallest ones then zigzagged past colorful plywood images of Santa, his reindeer and the gingerbread people hidden in this evergreen woods. I raced by the little hut where under a “snowy” roof, “icicles” dripped from eaves above smiling, laughing buyers who lined up to pay for their perfect tree.

In the shadowy back corner of the woodland, I cunningly laid low between two towering, lush trees then darted out and tagged Ricky. “You’re it!” I shouted, short-winded and incredibly happy to be in a Christmas Forest.

Eventually my hands became sticky with the essence of evergreen, my cheeks tingled from the brush of needle leaves. I was dirty, exhausted and ready for some hot chocolate at Jimmy’s house but excited about Christmas Day and mystical forests -- faraway, deep green and full of holiday magic.

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Hey You Down There - Tom O’Connor, Corvallis

As part of the Nearly Normals Restaurant family, I used to take on the yearly task of trimming the apple tree in the backyard – the one that occasionally dropped apples on customers. One time I was up there cutting away, when down below I could see outside the gate a man come and open the recycling and trash bins and start rummaging through them, picking out bottles. I could tell by his eyes that he was quite drunk. He had no idea I was there, and no one else was around.

I have a deep voice, but I made it even deeper, a “God” voice, and said “Hey, you really should NOT be doing that!”

He froze, red eyes wide. Then he looked around, this way and that way, behind him, in front of him, then looked around some more . I said again “That’s not a good thing to be doing.” He looked around again. But he never looked up.

He put down the bottles carefully and hustled away.

I’ll bet he doesn’t remember his version of this story.

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Regal Oregon Trees - Tyler Hansen, Corvallis

Trees are second-class citizens where I come from. We like our forests green and prickly in Arizona, where saguaros reign supreme and the liberals are called cactus-huggers.

Ah, how misguided I was living in the Sonoran Desert. Nothing is quite as regal as the trees in Oregon in the fall. I mean, did you see all the trees with red and orange and yellow leaves? I thought they only came in green and brown. I felt like I was walking around in a Disney movie every day.

I don’t know what types of trees there are in the mid-valley. Oak, probably, or maybe deciduous. I don’t even know what that means. It seemed like the only tree species available in Tucson were real houseplants and plastic houseplants.

And don’t even get me started on the topic of Christmas trees. I mean, there are Christmas tree farms here! I love Christmas trees more than I love most family members. When people asked why I was moving to Oregon, I rattled off some nonsense about change and job opportunities. They would have mocked me had I told them the real reason — the Christmas tree farms — but there’s a 30-foot Christmas tree growing right outside my front door.

Who’s laughing now, Tucson?

Oregon trees even maintain their splendor when they’re dead and bare in winter. I drive down Jefferson Avenue in Corvallis every day, and the corridor of (oak?) trees hanging over the roadway is, all joking aside, stunning.

Truth be told, the singular image that fueled my desire to move here was that of the trees on Jefferson in the summer. It prompted me to uproot my life in the desert and settle in this tree-laden land.

Now, if we can just get someone to swap out those oaks for Christmas trees…

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A Short Love Story - Steve Durkee, Corvallis

I’ve been in Oregon only a few years, and I haven’t yet met a tree here that I didn’t love.

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Eight Men On A Stump - Bruce Lethin, Corvallis

Opal came running up the hill screaming, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, they are cutting down my forest!" From across the road I could hear the chain saws screech and the heavy thud of the trees falling to the ground. I could feel Opal's sorrow knowing her forest would never be the same.

I explained to Opal that the farmers were at work harvesting their crops like our friends in the valley did every Fall. “Will they burn the land like they do in the valley?” she asked. “Yes, they will, just like in the valley. Then they will plant again and your forest will return when you have children to play there. That is the cycle of life here.”

We could hear the whistle punk sound his code to take the logs to the landing at the tower. We slid down the mud soaked road on our way to town. The rains came and the creek was full of mud. The fish choke; the heron has no food. It is the way of the clear-cut harvest here in the foothills.

I once protested the way the forest was disappearing. Now it is a patchwork of clear spots and partially grown trees, my words having fallen on deaf ears. The roads have gates and there is no trespass. No wood cutting as all the tree is used. It became lumber, plywood, paper. The maple and alder that was left behind in the last cuttings go to Asia.

The fourth or fifth cut of the crop. It is a long way from the days when it first began with felling of the old growth. Then a crew of 8 could stand on one stump and still have room for more. Today there is only room for one.

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Where Have All the Big Trees Gone? - Becky Merja, Corvallis

It seems as if thinking beyond 5 - 7 years is no longer part of our culture when it comes to trees. Have we become so used to the fast pace that we no longer think about what we are leaving to those who will come after us? Where are the people who would plant a large tree and expect it to grow for 150 years or more? Don’t we appreciate the people who had the foresight to plant the elm trees on lower campus over 100 years ago, or the London Plane trees on Jefferson? Why does someone reject the idea of planting a tree that could mature into something magnificent just because they don’t want to rake the leaves; when in reality they may not be living there when the tree is at its leaf producing best?

Does anyone out there miss the 5 spreading elm trees that shaded Central Park? Or the historic Avery walnut trees that stood sentinel over the Library and the Executive Building at the corner of 7th and Jackson. How about the native Oregon oak tree that resided just south of the Buchanan and 4th Street intersection. Or the Big leaf maple trees that inhabited the County Courthouse yard? Some of these trees were casualties of storms, others were victims of our “good” intentions, lack of foresight or what we might call progress.

These are all questions I struggle with as plans are made to remove another mature tree, not because it is diseased, dangerous or a victim of a weather event. Justification for removing such a beauty is always hard to understand when it’s about cleaning up after or working around the tree. I can’t count the number of time I have heard “we have so many trees, does it matter if I just cut down this one?” or “I love trees, but….”. Have we become so short sighted and cavalier about the future of this place we live that we neglect to plant large trees for future generations or reflect on whether it is really necessary to remove a healthy mature tree?