I am going to make the bizarre statement that self-taught travel photographers, or a travel writer with only one college level English credit, can actually compete with the accuracy of academic professionals, at least in thesis dissertations on American Frontier History, Alaskan Anthropology, Rural Western Economic Development, and perhaps, Forest Management In the Developing Global Warming World.  

I really am only bringing this up to explain to one Ivy League spotted owl biologist who wasn’t aware of the difference between a horse, and a mule, to plead against the insanity threatening “my forest,” of letting a fire burn out of control.

Yes I know that the wide spread Ponderosa in Yellowstone have recovered nicely as supposedly fire is needed to release seeds from Ponderosa Pine cones. I am not convinced that pseudotsuga menziesi,as Oregon’s uncommonly beautiful Douglas Fir cones will respond as well to local TV anchors assurances of —“don’t worry as the scientists of today know exactly what they are doing.”

My datum stating “perhaps not,” was collected as a Oregon schoolboy working on extra credit for a biology class by volunteering to help, side by side with unemployed “lumber farmers” putting in a new crop of Dougie Fir, in a state bond funded project of reforesting the Tillimook Burn. I just love driving over the Wilsonville Summit today and looking out over the forest we helped nature regenerate. Talk about being on the plus side for global warming carbon credits!

What I learned through this experience. The catastrophic burn creeping ever outward covered 550 square miles of privately owned old growth not managed by a forward looking U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture sustainable yield standards. In the 15 years following, dead trees not salvaged became the fuel leading to the nightmare of the burn being re-burned five additional times. The end result of this was that absolutely no fir cones survived to regenerate.  Forest duff, a natural compost of decayed fallen limbs, etc., was also burned down to a sterilized mineral soil devoid of any sort of microscopic life.

The original fire was so hot that embers made it all the way to downtown Portland streets, and a ship 400 miles away at sea was covered in falling ash. There are stories of water filled fire hoses exploding from steam pressure.

I witnessed the Mt. St. Helens eruption, and as a small child the much larger explosion of fire I was told was started by a bomb launched by Japanese schoolchildren via balloon to be carried by prevailing winds to land on Oregon. After WWII was over it was revealed that this program had indeed successfully killed American schoolchildren out on a picnic. But the tightly held wartime secret the Japanese were successful in setting one of the reoccurring fires in the Tillimook burn has escaped being “validated” by a publish or perish historian. 

Yes, the original fire was started by a donkey — a steam operated winch that could sled itself into place so that small scale gyppo loggers could selectively go after the big trees of an old growth forest. As this was before the invention of chainsaws, a team of fallers used the long hand propelled saw blade known as a misery whip, and in ways this —more than lack of roads— limited the harvest to be sustainable.  A careless smoker caused the second fire.

I don’t smoke, so the lesson I want to pass along revisiting a “non-designated” hunter’s camp we discovered in our first Class A motorhome, as a wonderful place to connect with the beauty of a road accessible, second growth plantation, where a “multiple use” recreationalist actually can see an Oregon rainforest — because of the trees.