Author's Note: I consider this entry a B-side. It was written in the middle of a stream of the 3 or 4 entries surrounding it. As you will see, I totally lost the plot, started to just ramble about this that and the other, and I definitely wouldn't re-write it. It just doesn't fit, but it is done, and I am gonna put it out there, burying it in spirit, but not leaving it a draft. It's done. It is what came out, but it isn't what I normally want to do. Sniff.
On Sunday, knowing I would spend the evening packing for NYC and all worked up in a panic over having to travel on Monday, I decided I absolutely HAD to get out and take in something of beauty. I did that. I did that to a nearly cosmic degree as I made my first voyage into the Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz. I have known that there are some champion Coastal Redwoods out there and in some other nearby parks, but I have just never made it out there. I usually think of the weather in Santa Cruz being miserable and horrible and to be avoided. I am beginning to loosen up about that a little bit, but all the same, I usually save my trips to the coast on the peninsula and south to this little window in which those places are sunny and warm. Being a prime example of just such a day, I picked out a route to include as much virgin mileage as possible, and I meandered my way through. From Saratoga, I went to CA 9, and then CA236 to enter the park the back way.
I get angry/sad when I am out in a beautiful place, as that area surely is, and then I see signs saying “Slow Log Trucks”. CA236 is all but a private little road for the nasty white people living out there, and the nastier logging companies plundering what whitey doesn’t own. For the most part, I have held my tongue concerning the meltdown of Dear Leader’s Culture Of Ownership Economy. There is so much I would like to say, but I am trying to keep toxic things out of my life. My only sadness in it all is that the pain of the psychosis of conservative economics can’t be visited solely on those who believe in it. And while it is true that the ownership of this debacle lies almost entirely on the Bush voter and those who vote for the GOP in general, there were plenty of people who took loans who knew they could never pay it back. That is no good either. One of the reasons it sucks is that activity like that fuels the speculator market. Those speculators in turn fuel the little kings of the townships who re-zone and divert resources to the building of the plywood shitboxes out on the edge of town. Without all of that phony bullshit, the need to destroy forests for timber and beautiful landscapes for ugly subdivisions simply doesn’t exist. That all of the destruction of the “boom” had no relationship to the supply/demand dynamic which normally allows capitalism to function in service of humanity is self-apparent. People can go around wringing their hands and whining, but in general, you can’t cheat an honest person. It is bad enough that there are people who consider those plywood shitboxes to be their ‘Dream”. Literally, we are to believe that it is a healthy and normal thing for such vulgar places represent a valid end game for all of our worldly desires! Ha! Again, you can’t cheat the honest.
And that is how I get back to the logging trucks. We build the roads out to the middle of nowhere to make it easy for the logs to be culled and brought out to build the shitboxes, and that is all considered “Good Living”. Nothing is more honest than living off of the sweat of one’s brow. The farmer does this. They plant, they grow, they reap, they sell, they get by. The logger & his bosses plant nothing. They grow nothing. They don’t live off of the “fat” of the land either. They just drop in and take something they have nothing to do with the creation of and sell it to speculators and developers who basically do with land what the lumber companies do with trees and land. They do nothing sustainable or self-perpetuating. They depend on the continuous use of resources that they did nothing to create. They literally turn the planet into a Consumer Packaged Good, something that must be consumed to be used. That we permit it is a part of the wider psychosis the bulk of this nation lives under, but I can’t change it. It has become clear to me that our country is incapable of doing things the easy way. If you hear of the tragedy of the commons at all, you likely do so in some shit-stained economics class at one of our institutions of higher learning. Up until that point – and after as well, remarkably enough – you are taught that the most important word we have is “mine”, preferably when repeated loudly over and over while covering your ears, or perhaps threatening to shoot someone who steps on your lawn.
I wish I had known I would be driving through so much private land before I chose my route. You can look at a map and guess sometimes, but the map looked as if my route took me through beautiful switchback mountain roads all the way into the park. The roads were switchback, and it was mountainous, but it wasn’t all beauty. It never is when the private land is as plentiful. While we don’t clear cut in California like I have seen in degenerate Oregon Outback (sorry OR, I really like your state other than this!), it is enough to make me heartsick; especially when my whole purpose is to get out and see the unique and beautiful trees of NorCal. The power of the experience of being around the big trees is so overwhelming to me that the contrast of seeing the log trucks brings out the worst in my instincts. I really despise the whole enterprise, not because humans shouldn’t be allowed to use trees, but because we shouldn’t be allowed to wantonly destroy whole forests to satiate speculators and the whole Peasants-Made-Good-Via-New-Subdivisions psychosis some call our “dream”. To live with a people who cannot see when trees are of greater value standing and living amidst others and when the tree is of greater value turned into wood products is something I will likely die bitter about. No one is bothered when someone like W writes down the value of our national parks and forests so that he can justify their taking for profit. Who can argue with such logic in the midst of a housing boom!?!
As you can see, all the beauty I took in at Big Basin and in the surrounding hills wasn’t enough to keep me from feeling bitter. Surely while I was under the canopy of the trees and in the park, I got that sense of wonder I went out for in the first place. These places are holy to me. They are how I reconnected with God. They still overwhelm my senses and my heart. It is the ride in and, unfortunately, ride out that finds my senses and heart overtaken with disgust at who we are. These are things I am going to have to learn to let go since it is impossible to change them. It is in our national character to turn away from things we know are wrong because to stop someone else from living like a gluttonous pig could be used to preclude us from being able to do the same when our numbers come in, and we ain’t havin’ that. In our dream, the pie grows forever. We may realize that is folly, but the end game won’t play out til long after we’re gone, so who gives a fuck, right?
See, now here I said I was gonna not get into all the political stuff, and I cheated. I am guilty. Sue me. I already voted, so it is over as far as I am concerned. I can kvetch if I am so inclined without the taint of sloganeering, but until all vote and the results are known, I will keep trying to suck it down (not that I will always succeed - Senator Obama is no Superhero, but it would be nice to have the chance to stop the assault on the judiciary, not to mention it would be more than a little historically significant to have lived to see an African American elected President...until it happens, it ain't happened, and I wouldn't want my highly influential weblog to muddy the waters by openly campaigning!) I will try to keep these outbursts minimal over the next few days. I am surprised I have been as good about it as I have been. Perhaps it is the serenity that comes with the beautiful NorCal weather.
Perhaps it is just my life of cool, analytic thinking kept right by my even-keel emotional disposition!
Posted by rudayday at October 26, 2008 07:54 PM