The Forest Prime Evil

by Alan Russell

  “You sound supportive.”

  “Of the concept, not his practices. We’ve cut down billions of trees, and look at the results: global warming, loss of humus and topsoil, wind and rain erosion, increasing severity of drought and floods, and spreading deserts.”

  “Pagan practices don’t exactly answer those problems.”

  “There are truths in what you call pagan practices. When the missionaries sought to cut the sacred groves in Lithuania, many prevailed upon their prince to protect the trees, saying that it was wrong to destroy the house of the god from which they received rain and sunshine.

  “Instinctively people know it’s wrong to cut down their woods. When a forest is cleared, the humus is destroyed, and the earth is laid open to the elements. Without tree cover, temperatures rise. Without shade, moisture is not retained. We start a vicious cycle, and we don’t know where it stops.”

  “But I understand that you believe irresponsible tree planting is far worse than no tree planting at all.”

  “True. Which isn’t to say I didn’t believe in reforesting. I do—when it’s done wisely. History tells us we must. When the trees were cut down in the Midwest, there were no roots to hold the soil, and there was the Dust Bowl. In the north of England, there used to be great forest, and, when those were chopped away, the moors appeared. When the oaks in southwestern France were cleared for farmland, droughts followed. Once there were cedars in Lebanon. Not long ago there were even cedars in what is now the Sahara Desert. Man cut and hacked and plowed, and the global landscapes changed for the worse.”

  “Did you support Shepard’s Green Belt?”

  “No, I can’t say I did. It’s possible to grow a redwood in the desert, but is it desirable? Is it right? There were many areas along his proposed Green Belt where trees don’t grow naturally. I thought it presumptuous of him to think he knew better than nature. It reminded me of some of the literature I’ve read from Weyerhaeuser, or Boise Cascade, or Trans-Mississippi, where they’d almost have you believe that nature’s damn lucky to have them around. The Green Man seemed to be aping forest company casuistry.”

  “I heard a rumor that Shepard was getting cozy with Trans-Miss. Any substance to that?”

  “Sounds like jealousy to me. In this movement there’s a game I don’t like. I call it ‘greener than you are’ syndrome.”

  “So some people liked to think they were greener than the Green Man?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I understand Ashe O’Connor borrowed your Jeep.”

  Teller nodded.

  “What was that she was bringing to her mother?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She didn’t tell me she had family nearby.”

  Teller didn’t comment.

  “Where’s her mother live?”

  Tersely: “Lofield.”

  “With her father?”

  “Stepfather.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  And he didn’t make any attempt to try, I noticed.

  12

  THIS TIME TELLER didn’t fall asleep, but he might as well have. He stopped answering, seemingly mesmerized by the view. The vista was nice enough, but, since we were only thirty feet up, I hardly thought we had the world at our feet. I sat with Teller for a few more minutes, then threw the stairs overboard and let myself down. As I walked away, I could hear the metal stairway being retracted.

  Doc wasn’t in sight when I got back to the road, either on the ground or in the trees. His motorcycle was still there, but I didn’t wait around for him to reappear. I still had a little more than an hour before my rendezvous with Evans, and with that time I decided to see how the mighty are fallen.

  Not far away was Scotia, and the world’s largest redwood mill. Scotia was a town owned lock, stock and redwood barrel by the Pacific Lumber Company; she’d been a kept lady for over a hundred years. Once, company lumber towns were the way of life throughout the Pacific Northwest. Now there are only a few survivors. It even surprised me that there were that many. I had thought company towns had gone the way of polio and segregated water fountains. They conjure up images of West Virginia coal towns—one-store monopolies, with institutionalized repression and squalor. Mention company town and you can almost hear a bluesy voice singing: “Saint Peter, don’t yah call me ‘cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.” But Scotia wasn’t like that, at least not its exterior.

  The three hundred identical houses were painted a nice Tom Sawyer white. The lawns were well trimmed, and the yards immaculate. There wasn’t much room for individuality, but the price was right. Maybe the residents in those immaculate houses felt a little besieged. There were a number of signs advertising NO ON 150. Also popular were placards reading THIS FAMILY SUPPORTED BY TIMBER DOLLARS and LOGGERS ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES.

  There were also signs to the mill, but those were unnecessary. Any one of my five senses could have led me there. Smokestacks billowed, and machinery hollered. From far away, I felt the vibrations, and smelled the pulp burning, and tasted the sulfur in the back of my mouth. I had seen the mill from 101. It was immense, but anything that swallows titans would have to be.

  The self-tours were complimentary. I would have been more at ease had there been a charge. Caveat emptor, especially when the price is free. I pulled up to the gate, and another sign. This one proclaimed, TO US, EVERY DAY IS EARTH DAY. I could already feel the price of admission. I was welcomed by an affable young blond woman. She handed me some informational literature, including a three-by-six-and-a-half-inch redwood directional guide. It was a nice touch, the kind of souvenir visitors would keep, but I hoped it wasn’t old growth.

  The huge mill seemed out of place, General Motors in the forest. The buildings were painted yellow, perhaps a shade removed from canary. You don’t see many yellow buildings. You don’t even see many yellow houses. They’re usually about as appealing as yellow snow.

  Directions were posted on yellow signs, and the guiding arrows were yellow. I was beginning to see a pattern. I followed that pattern and ended up climbing some stairs and looking out to a thirty-acre millpond. No beavers, only redwoods upon redwoods. A small placard told me that I was looking at 12 million board feet of logs. Hydraulic hoists and conveyors processed the logs along. Beyond the pond was a cogeneration plant. Another placard told me how the wood waste was turned into energy, 25 million watts a day, enough to keep the plant wheels turning and then some.

  Anyone who likes quiet repose shouldn’t visit an industrial redwood mill. From the observation deck, I was shaken at regular intervals. Teeth vibrating, I walked over to the barking compound. Metal jaws positioned huge redwoods. Imagine the impact of sumo wrestlers, and multiply that by a few thousand. Compared with a redwood mill, an auto-wrecking yard is a pastoral enterprise, almost genteel.

  Redwoods are known for their thick ax-eating bark. Pacific Lumber solved that problem by fighting with water. A high-pressure nozzle propelled jets of water at the bark, striking it with a force of sixteen hundred pounds per square inch. In the course of a minute, twelve hundred gallons of water pounded the bark, flaying it clean. I watched the skinning of a tree behind a safety window. Every bad horror film shows blood splattering up against glass. The pulverized bark splashed my window in just such a way.

  I walked along a catwalk above the goings-on of the mill. If I didn’t exactly walk the plank, I walked above where the planks were being made. There was a fine mist in the air, not precipitation but sawdust. Sirens periodically went off, making me feel as if an air raid was going on. Below me, conveyor chains moved the wood along, while overhead the lumber was transported via monorail. There were edgers and trimmers, men in glass booths directing the flow and cutting of wooden traffic. Saws of all sizes and proportions buzzed and chewed and cut. Eighty-five million board feet were turned out by the mill in an average year. I watched as a battery of men sorted boards from the conveyor table. They were
reminded by sign that they had worked twenty-three days without a lost-time accident.

  Drying redwood boards covered some seventy-eight acres of the mill. In some places they were piled up to thirty feet high. The sight was impressive in its own right, but somehow all the pieces just didn’t add up to a single standing redwood. Like a fallen Humpty-Dumpty, they couldn’t be put back together again.

  I came away from the mill with a respect for man’s ingenuity. I left impressed by the sheer power of the place. But I didn’t leave exultant, and I wasn’t walking quickly. I felt a little punch-drunk, a little pummeled. My senses had been overwhelmed by all the pounding, and sounds, and movement.

  But that wasn’t it exactly. Inside, I felt old.

  Old as the denuded hills.

  Evans showed up at our rendezvous spot right on time. He asked me how Methuselah was, and I told him he was still standing. Then I mumbled something to him about how I had also “visited a slaughterhouse.” Evans asked a question or two, then pretended to take umbrage.

  “Slaughterhouses like that support me,” he said. “About a quarter of the county’s revenues are generated from timber taxes.”

  “And does that make the lumber companies sacred cows?” I asked.

  “You’re mixing your metaphors, Winter,” he told me. “Slaughterhouses in one sentence, sacred cows in the next.”

  “Bullshit whichever way you look at it,” I said. Evans looked vaguely amused.

  As the crow flies, River Grove isn’t far from Fortuna, but, as the car drives, it’s a different story. When we got off the main road, we severely tested the car’s, and our own, shock absorbers. Our conversation was limited. To talk was to bite your tongue. Evans did manage to say, though, that this was “real forest,” but that no one really gave a damn, “ ’specially them EverGroaners.”

  “Most people’ll stop and snap a few pictures around the Avenue of the Giants,” he said, “but that’s about it. Tree huggers want to save every grove older than their grandma, but you think any of them ever bother to go out and explore those woods? No way.”

  With my head rapping against the top of the car, I didn’t feel like giving a long answer. Instead I mimed, pointing to the surrounding forest. “Important out there,” I said, then pointed to my head. “And important in here. Psychic revenue.”

  “Actual revenue’s not such a bad thing either,” he said.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  The woods were thick. Real forest, as Evans had said. Most so-called nature lovers idealize the abstract. But wilderness on its own terms is intimidating. It’s not there to nurture you. Most people get uneasy when they find themselves removed from the human infrastructure. For all his cynicism, perhaps Evans was more honest about the woods than I. For the sake of purity, I wanted undeveloped areas, places where RV’s and concession stands couldn’t intrude. Woods for their own sake. The vision was nice, the reality less than accommodating.

  We weren’t in the boonies. We were in the forest primeval, ancient, untouched, and old. Farther and farther, we traveled into the darkness. I looked at my watch and had to push the light option to see. It was a little after four.

  “Getting near,” said Evans, pointing to three redwoods growing right next to one another. “That’s my landmark.”

  And a good example of the immortal redwood theory, I thought. The three trees were growing from the same root structure, were in some ways the same tree. In time, I supposed, one of the great shoots would be victorious, would claim the sky and crowd the others out. But how long would that take? Five hundred years? Longer? Humans play the ponies. Only the gods can bet on redwoods.

  Evans pulled over into a clearing. The glade was small. It hadn’t been deforested by man; it was one of those openings in the woods that naturally occur. We got out of the car, and I followed Evans. He took a few steps, planted himself, and gave me a sideways look. A retriever couldn’t have pointed any better.

  There wasn’t anything to mark where the Green Man had died, not even a widow-maker. I looked at the towering redwood under which he had fallen, suddenly paranoid. Lightning’s not supposed to strike the same place twice. But I wondered about widow-makers. I hunched my shoulders, looked around, cast some furtive looks up at the encircling giants.

  Evans noticed. “Spooks you, doesn’t it?”

  “A bit,” I admitted. “Why don’t we walk? I’d feel more comfortable as a moving target.”

  “Where to?”

  “How about Shepard’s goosepen?”

  Evans led the way. I’ve been in situations where cross hairs have sought me out. In some ways, the walk felt akin to that. Gradually the feeling passed. There were a few widow-makers to be seen, but the path wasn’t littered with them. The quietness in the woods was profound. Our footsteps made no sound.

  Evans started talking, I think, to break the silence. “Cut enough trees down,” he said, “and it figures that one’s going to cut down a human. Wish he’d found another way to die, though. Set all sorts of tongues to talking.”

  “The redwoods could have picked a better target,” I admitted.

  “Some people would argue with you,” he said.

  “Politics notwithstanding,” I said, “there’s still not much justice in a tree planter getting killed by a tree. A couple of years ago, a man went with his shotgun out into the Arizona desert. He decided to use a saguaro cactus as target practice. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a saguaro. They’re usually used in the artistic desert photos, the sun rising through their upraised arms. This man wasn’t content with just shooting the saguaro, he wanted to gut it. He shot off a number of rounds. Then he got the biggest and last surprise of his life when the saguaro fell on him, and killed him.”

  Evans waited to see if I had anything else to add. I didn’t. “And that’s justice?” he asked.

  “Some feel the punishment fit the crime.”

  “Then maybe you should close down your investigation.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Maybe the redwoods dealt their own justice just like that cactus.”

  “Killing a man who was trying to protect them?”

  “That’s one version of the story,” said Evans.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. But some say your Green Man wasn’t exactly the savior of the redwoods.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The way I heard it, he liked making an impact, liked planting in barren areas, and leaving a legacy of his green statues and monuments. The redwoods aren’t like that. They’ve been here millions of years.”

  “But Shepard did organize some planting campaigns here,” I said. “I saw the pictures of him putting redwood seedlings in the ground.”

  “He gave that up when he learned how well the timber industry does with their own plantings.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how a redwood’s killing him could be considered poetic justice.”

  “Not just any redwood,” said Evans, “an old-growth redwood. There are some who say he was actually setting that cause back. Trees were trees to him. He loved them all, but I don’t think it mattered to him if a tree was ten years old or a thousand years. He couldn’t understand what all the old-growth fuss was about.”

  “Is that another rumor, or do you have verification?”

  “I’ve heard it from a couple of people,” he said.

  So had I, even if I didn’t want to admit it to Evans. We kept walking. I tried to orient myself. The road was already well out of sight. I was confused, felt like I had been spun around a few times. The trees made any mental mapping difficult. Skyscrapers without street signs. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, a freeway was proposed through an old-growth forest. Supposedly Reagan uttered, “If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.” His constituency didn’t agree with him, and neither did I, even if at the moment I felt a little disconcerted about being in Brobdingnag and not knowing my way around. Being damned conf
used about the Green Man didn’t help my orientation efforts either.

  “Then why did he live out here?” I asked. “Wasn’t he in River Grove as some kind of sentry? Didn’t EverGreen make a statement that he was camped in these woods to make sure Trans-Miss didn’t do any illegal cuts?”

  Evans nodded. “That’s the story.”

  “Then if he didn’t care about old growth, why was he here?”

  The big shoulders shrugged. “Maybe he was vacationing.”

  That wasn’t out of the question, I supposed. A place away from it all. Shepard loved his trees. Maybe he needed the quiet. Or perhaps he had been seduced by the big trees. He had planted millions of trees in his lifetime, but none such as these. Then again, maybe he wanted the solitude for other things: his ceremonies, his lover.

  In the quiet woods, our heavy breathing became all the more pronounced. I noticed that we were following a slight trail, an indentation along the forest floor. Whether it had been made by the Green Man, or the curious, I didn’t know. The path led to a hollowed tree, the Green Man’s goosepen. The little boy in me was impressed. In every heart there is buried a Robinson Crusoe. In some of us, it’s not buried very deep. I tapped around the interior of the tree.

  “Buying a used car?” asked Evans.

  I didn’t respond, just scrutinized the goosepen like a prospective tenant.

  “He had a kind of curtain which he dropped over the opening,” said Evans. “Made it look real homey.”

  “All you’d need is running water,” I said.

  The long arm of the law pointed southeast. “Stream about a hundred yards thataway.”

  I stuck my head into the goosepen. I stand six foot three, and I didn’t have to duck. There was a shelf above me. Man-made. I reached up and felt around.

  “That was his storage room,” said Evans.

  “What did you find?”

  “A bedroll and some blankets. Some food. A lantern. Batteries. A few books, and a few changes of clothes. Guess he didn’t need too many outfits if he was walking around naked the whole time.”