After a few days of frustration and confusion, Uncle Weed sits down on the trail and digs into a variety of essays from Beloved of the Sky by Gary Snyder, Howie Wolk, and Michael Frome plus riffs on painter Emily Carr, love/hate with the commercialized Wild Pacific trail, shore pines, lighthouses, volcanic outcroppings, leaning trees, branches covered in lichen, and sub-division developments.

Topics include the US Forest Service’s traditional commitment to conservation and subsequent effects of policy after cozying up to industry, a plea for less waste and sustainable forestry, public expectations and costs of lost wilderness, and ponderings about whether recreation and wildlife matter. 

Downcast podload: Conservation and Clearcuts – Rainforest Dispatches, chapter 5/9 – 25:24

  Reading “Beloved of the Sky – Essays and Photographs on Clearcutting” – Edited by John Ellison, Broken Moon Press * Howie Wolk “The Great Myth of Clearcut Forestry” * Michael Frome “Losing Balance: Just how Multiple is Our Multiple Use?” * Gary Snyder “Ancient Forests of the Far West” Purchase “Beloved of the Sky” via Amazon

Participate Your input on this topic is invited – particularly if you participated in the protests or traveled to this area. Consider leaving a comment and/or recording an audio missive of your own to use in a future episode. Let me know where you stashed your blockade memories or other rainforest thoughts by emailing: choogleon (at) uncleweed (dot) net or via Twitter @choogleon and/or @uncleweed, etc.

Music Theme: Bex – Lonesome (Lost) Traveler Seque: Wm. Lenker – excerpts from Heaven Holds a Place Interlude: William Elliott Whitmore – Lifetime Underground

Background This is Part 5 of 9 (or more) in the Rainforest Dispatches series on Choogle On with Uncle Weed a series of explorations and soliloquies from the Clayoquot Sound area on the west coast of Vancouver Island during a summertime water outage in the midst of a temperate rainforest. While figuring out what happened, Uncle Weed recollects the tense logging blockades in early 1990s and compares current conditions through lens of deep ecology and sustainable development practices.

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