Freshwater sitter - 11/04/02 & 11/05/02

--11/04/02--

Wow! Computers in the trees! It took about 15 minutes for the thing to boot up because it had to scan for any errors due to incorrect shut down. It seems to be sucking the life out of my big battery up here. Maybe a third battery would be appropriate…

Melissa Crabtree and Rachel Garlin, who are traveling in a bio-diesel van, came to play us some music and show support for the tree-sits. They saw Ani play last night, who talked about the tree-sits and dedicated a song to the tree-sitters. Live music at the base of Jerry is so wonderful, and the view as I hang a few feet above them is spectacular, Jerry’s massive roots reaching deep into the Earth create a stage so moving as the 200ft. trees dance. It’s lovely to live in a tree and greet such awesome people like Melissa and Rachel.

It’s November and far sunnier than July. Other than the days being shorter, it feels like summer. It makes me think of the Democracy Now when Amy Goodman talked about global warming, 120degree temperatures in India, massive flooding in Dresden, Germany and Prague. It felt like a horrible futuristic movie, where climate change suddenly became real and detrimental, only yes, it is real.

So many ancient trees have been lost in these past two plus months since Judge Golden put a stay on all Pacific Lumber timber operations, an order that PL has refused to comply with. Residents in the Elk River Watershed reported seeing more old growth being hauled out than they had in years. PL continues at its suicidal million board feet per day while the CA dept. of (de)forestry sits on their hands and “defers to PL on this one.”

For eight weeks I watched as PL used weapons of mass destruction on an area of forest that they turned into 22+ acres of clear-cut wasteland. This is in an area where they have nearly annihilated the coho salmon population in just the last five years. For twenty million years an ancient forest flourished here, offering life and shelter to countless living beings. In just under two hundred years, the euro-american value system has killed off the grizzly, the wolf and is working on the marbled murrelet and the last of the giant redwoods, like the one I’m living in.

Susan Moloney has nearly completed one lunar cycle on a hunger strike to encourage Governor Gray Davis to keep his four year old campaign promise to save the last of the ancient trees, which he clearly has not done. He has so far taken no public notice of Susan’s action or the ongoing tree-sits, even in light of the death of a tree-sitter in Santa Cruz last month.

I’m signing off before I loose all my juice!


-----11/05/02------

Pacific Lumber arrived about 8:30 Tuesday morning and immediately began working it two separate area. In the first area they began cutting trees in the vacinity of one of the tree-sits, cutting 4-5 trees down. In the second area they went at the small trees with a tractor that did not cut the trees down but merely pushed them over to make way for the logging road they are putting in. The workers would engage in any dialog with the tree-sitters, not bothering to find out if there were any tree-sits they didn't know about.

There were many Humboldt County sheriffs vehicles here, and the keepers of that office appeared to have no problem with PL cutting trees so close to the tree-sits, nor any problem with PL ignoring a judges two-month old order to halt all Pacific Lumber timber operations. They were quite happy, however, to make a couple arrests of non-violent citizens, and handle them roughly in the process. It reminds me of my own comparison of Charles Hurwitz to Al Capone, who had all “authorities” in the city of Chicago in his pocket during prohibition. Hurwitz has accomplished something similar, obviously, as while he lives his cheap millionaires life in Houston, Texas, he’s got a fully equipped army here to ensure that the forest is destroyed and the money keeps coming in. Make no mistake, any profit gained from destroying the forest and integrity of this area of Northern California is being siphoned directly into the pockets of a Texas corporate raider.

One activist, Gibbon, climbed a second growth redwood where they were working to ensure it would remain standing. He called out to me “Hey Remedy, this tree made me climb it!”

Several dump trucks came in to deliver loads of dirt for the logging road they are putting in, which was the majority of the work they did. Dialog occurred between workers and citizens though they went ahead with their work.

There are currently four tree-sits in this unit, which is 38 acres of mainly second growth trees with a couple ancient redwoods that survived previous logging operations. This is the second largest Timber Harvest Plan in Freshwater Watershed, and is an area where the federally listed coho salmon have been nearly annihilated in the last five years due to Pacific Lumber’s negligent logging practices.

---posters note-----
the winter rains started as the task of posting this tonight for remedy. first time it's rain in a long time......

for more info:
http://www.fastforoldgrowth.org
http://www.wildcalifornia.org