National Sacrifice Region
by R.L. Richards
For the past four or so years, i've lived with a splendid
close-up view of the Columbia River ship channel. From my vantage point
here I can see Astoria to my right, partially eclipsed by Tongue Point.
At night, the lights of Cathlamet glow to my left, eastward up the river.
My view across the river to the Oregon side is of craggy Saddle Mountain
rising from a freeze-framed rolling sea of hills.
The scene appears as if a giant lawn-mower, tuned to an incongruent geometry,
has shorn miles of hills. Or maybe some punk barber, after being slipped
an unexpected hallucinogenic dose, had wielded clippers without any means
of sober judgment. The same imagery is true of the Washington hills that
form my eastern horizon behind Cathlamet. I'm aware that the landscape of
the Willapa Hills to my north, hidden from my sight by a steep cliff, would
appear much the same to one standing on the Columbia's south shore.
Curiously, as I scan from left to right above the Oregon shore with binoculars,
from Brownsmead to Knappa and up behind Svenson Island, I see a few inconsistent
stands of sizable trees nested in the lower hills. These small sylvan preserves
are somehow defying the scarring typical of the more general skinhead forestry.
On a clear day, as I bring my focal plane to about eight miles, I find the
mansions-of whom, I do not know. They are centered against these tall backdrops
of natural beauty and are facing north toward the Columbia and its green
islands. I wonder as I look, about stock portfolios and the economic powers
which can place these glorious green and autumn gold curtains between the
rich and the ugly, anti-life source of transitory riches.
Traveling not a lot these days, I am not surprised to find more than one
new clearcut on any supply run to Astoria or Longview. Most are third cuts.
In the areas that were easily logged out to river banks a century and a
half ago, some fourth cuts now distress a land whose fertility has been
handily subsidized by a seemingly endless procession of Pacific storms.
On a regional average, one in every four trees goes export. Those that go
down this ship channel are patently "in my face."
Because of mandated bans on exportation from our (?) National Forests and
the two state's timber holdings (i.e. our publicly-owned trees), the hills
I can see from here account for much of the region's share of export logs.
One ridge to my southeast, rising to the south from Aldrich Point, holds
a portion of Oregon's Clatsop State Forest. Though it bears the telltale
checkerboard patterns of clearcuts, it has a few older stands not yet sucked
away by the international economic competitors. I would venture a guess
that close to three out of four local trees (what few are left) die for
the export market. Our public trees must make up the shortfall for our domestic
log appetite (must get out those Sunday editions and direct-market junk-mailings).
My eyes and imagination are assaulted by the visions of demise for the taking
of whole forests worth of tree trunks (the word "log" is a euphemism
for the economically desirable portion of a once-living tree). The forests
of trees, having been ripped from the now bare and eroding hills, are packed
into ships by the tens, twenties, and thirties of thousands, leaving every
few days from the Port of Longview. I say, as a friend of mine shouts out
to the departing log ships every time he sees one, "Grow your own!"
What I cannot see from here is the similar scene that I know repeats at
the many other Northwest timber ports. From the top of the bridge I can
see Astoria's log port which moves only a fraction the volume of most. But
unlike those other ports, this Columbia River commerce reaches like the
hand of some desperate diabolical surgeon into the very guts of our region.
A demon doctor that has renounced any idea of an Hippocratic oath is taking
the life of our lands to supply a black market for filched organs. It is
as if these trees, the lungs of our planet, were the main in-greed-ient
for some new designer drug, wanted widely as the ultimate euphoric or aphrodisiac.
Just as in the drug scene, profit is the driver. Knowing the patient must
die for his crime, our "expert" physician deceitfully covers his
tracks by quietly inserting into the body of our region a deadly disease
pill. On our region's death certificate, the cause of death might be noted
as "cancer," while the strangely missing lungs would be overlooked,
the very lungs which had helped feed the region the primary and essential
nutrient, oxygen.
Though not as often as the log ships haul the lung parts down the Columbia,
but just as regularly, a Foss towboat (this company has recently been airing
public relations ads on Portland TV) enters the river towing a black barge.
This barge carries a big black pill. In my time here, I've seen many dozens
of them. It is always the same. The barge is followed by a second "emergency
back-up" tug (apparently the disease pill is so powerful that no room
for error exists; it must be surely placed, deep in the heartland). The
barge and tugs are followed at some distance by a small gray security escort
with white numbers on its bow. It appears our doctor and/or his pharmacist
has a commission in the Navy, for these big black pills, in actuality, are
being slipped into the center of our region. They are the radioactively
contaminated, spent nuclear-reactor cores from decommissioned submarines.
Cross-sectional slices of today's U-boats, too hot to make into Toyotas.
They are being brought to the Nuclear Reservation, a no-man's land, surrounded
on three sides by the Columbia River. Hanford, as has been reported, has
leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste, some of which had reached
the Columbia even before it was known that the leaks existed. In efforts
to assess the harm, many test wells were drilled which inadvertently linked
previously isolated strata, allowing more waste even more access to the
water table and the river.
Now it has become known that many buried tanks containing millions more
gallons are in danger of explosion. What might be the result when the, now
due, subduction zone earthquake (expected to range between 8.5 and 9.5,
Richter) heaves and shifts the strata beneath the buried super-contaminants?
The Federal Government has, at times, designated certain places as National
Sacrifice Areas. This has been, I believe, only where its messes were too
blatant to keep hidden or its wants too lustful to control. Taken as an
admission that no sincere effort toward a clean-up will occur, these areas
have usually been where the local people's political forces were weak. All
of these monstrosities have, of course, remained covert for as long as possible.
One lesson of history, the principle of the "BIG LIE," is not
lost on the Feds and industry.
If the results of their actions were so horrendous as to threaten a whole
region, would they warn us? There is a stark contrast between what I see
as the life energy of our region being hauled away as export, and what could
very potentially be the death of our region being brought here without popular
mandate. This contrast shows me all too well that very probably in someone's
mind, the Pacific Northwest is a National Sacrifice Region.