The Final Forest

This will be last last logging diatribe, I promise. But the past three days could have been called "Adventures Through Tree Farms", and 100 miles of riding through that landscape gives you plenty of time of think. 

When I was a young environmentalist (I started a local EarthSavers Club in first grade) the headline grabber in the 90s was the battle for the old growth forests in this very place we're riding through. The supporters of the rare spotted owl went head to head with Washington loggers, who were hell bent on cutting down over giant cedar, spruce, fir and hemlock they could get their chainsaws on. When I got to college I learned about the Earth First movement, and a lot of their monkey wrenching during those battles involved chaining themselves to the last remaining old growth trees or debilitating the logging trucks transporting the fallen trees.

Travis has been reading a book called Final Forest by William Dietrich, which profiles ground zero of the logging battles in Forks, Washington, a town we passed through. They are the self-proclaimed Logging Capital of the World. Turns out the hyperbole of Trees vs. Jobs was a little more complicated than purported by either side, and it took Dietrich 600 pages to hash it all out, so I won't attempt it in a blog post. 

However, these are my observations as a very outside observer: these once-thriving logging towns we keeping passing through are obviously dwindling because there aren't nearly as many old growth trees to cut down. And yes, trees do grow back, but they grow back in neatly-planted tree farms which are easily harvested by one man in a giant machine, instead of many men with chainsaws. Even after the Trees vs. Jobs struggle in Forks, the skilled workers who fought so desperately for their way of life were replaced with machines by their employers. 

The heart of the matter still stands-- those who profit the most from the forest don't really give a shit about Trees OR Jobs. They care about money. Logging companies are just like mining companies, which are just like fracking companies: they will extract and extract and extract resources until there's nothing left and then move on, without a second thought to the future of the land or the wellbeing of their loyal workers.

That's capitalism for you. 

Obviously some things have got to change if I want to feel good about giving this world to my children to inherit. Nature will never exist ever again as "untouched by Man." Man has touched everything and changed it all. I'm setting myself up for disappointment if I ever think that I was see a truly "wild" place in my lifetime. We have an exciting challenge ahead of us to make a world that's realistically sustainable. We'll be on the right track if we work on developing our society without developing all our natural resources, and if we work on centering our lives less on debt and want and more on exchange and self-reliance. 

And we have successes to turn to for inspiration as we move forward. Culminating with the Trees vs. Jobs battles of the 90s, public opinion about clear cutting old growth forest has changed. The spotted owl was listed as a threatened species, and to protect its habitat logging on federal lands in the Peninsula has greatly declined or even stopped. These days, the Wild Olympics campaign has garnered congressional support and there is proposed legislation to put 126,000 additional acres of old growth, second growth, and rivers in the Olympic Peninsula into protection. There is still strong opposition to the bill in logging communities but according to polls, 64% of Washington voters in the 6th Congressional District support the measure. 

There's still a lot of work to do, but maybe we will be able to take our grandkids to visit the rainforest giants. 

No Wonder Kurt Had Problems

Today we encountered and survived the weirdest town we've seen on this trip. And not without injury.

After a luxurious diner breakfast with WIFI, we left Quinault just to head towards Oregon. The guide book Travis has been consulting told us to take a coastal route that would add a whole extra day and it didn't sound that awesome, so we just headed south. Which took us to Aberdeen.

Travis said, "Oh, I think my favorite punk band The Melvins is from here." 

I said, "Yeah isn't Nirvana from here??" 

Oh yes they were. And boy do I have a much better understanding Kurt's mental health problems now.

But first we had to go through Hoquiam, which is right across the river from Aberdeen, and equally weird. These towns are in the middle of a forest and they have managed to cut down every single tree in the neighborhoods. Not only that, but the houses are all identical, so much so that they look like company towns. 

Just across the bridge is Aberdeen. It's a big, weird, grey, dying city. There is a proper downtown but it's obviously not in full force. There are three story buildings with alleys running through them, complete with lingering shadowy characters. Even though the downwtown area is totally walkable and quaint, they've made the main streets into oneway, high speed boulevards and allowed chain fast food to infiltrate its local economy, which is rare for Western towns. That being said, there was not only a gamer store dedicated to Magic: The Gathering, but an entire Star Wars store. When your reality sucks it's very easy to turn to fantasy.

Aberdeen was founded on timber and water traffic, both ocean and river. Even in its heyday of the early 1900s it was a scummy town, known colloquially as "The Hellhole of the Pacific", filled up with saloons, whorehouses, gambling establishments and a high murder rate. The vast majority of the lumber mills closed in the 1970s and 80s, and are still closing today. A quarter of the downtown businesses are shuttered, and with no industry to replace fishing or logging, there will be no stop to its steady decline. 

We had to navigate baffling, high speed traffic to reach the stopped at a health food store to resupply on bulk goods. All I could think looking at the customers and employees there was, "Dudes! This is a sinking ship! Just bail!" 

Here's the worst part-- leaving the health food store I had to decide whether to take the sidewalk or face oncoming one way traffic, and I flinched and wobbled my bike. I was still clipped in with all by bags on my bike, and I just fell straight over onto the sidewalk, with full force landing on my knee. And my bad knee at that! It immediately bruised and started swelling, and I could feel each pedal stroke irritating it for the rest of the day. 

We were desperate to leave this awful town, but had to cross more fast one way traffic, climb our bikes up some stairs and ride down the sidewalk of a very high, windy, mesh-floored drawbridge. It was terrifying. When we emerged off the bridge we got confused about which road we were on, and asked the man on the bike ahead of us if we were on Highway 101. He had long greasy hair and a bandana, and no gear besides a big sleeping bag strapped to his rack.

"It's Highway 105," he said. "You know they got lots of things down there, like clams, and big houses, geraniums, cranberries, I always try and go down over there whenever I can becau--" 

I said, "Oh that's nice, but we're trying to get to Astoria, we have to find 101."  

"Oh yeah, 101, I was down there yesterday," he continued without a pause. "It's kinda expensive, you know because there are just so many people there. There are at least ten big ships down there and when I was there last time..."

"Ok thanks!" I shouted as we pedaled away very fast. 

Finally, when we were on 101 South, we were on our way out of town when we passed two hitchhikers, both girls and both with puppies. They had cardboard signs attached to their backpacks, and one girl was not only wearing a tutu, but had fastened a crown of taffeta to the top of her pack.

"This is the source of all the street kids in Portland," Travis said. "If I were from here, I would do ANYTHING to get to Seattle. I would work the shittiest job, live in the shittiest apartment, as long as it wasn't here."

Then he told me about the exchange he had in the health food store when I was checking out. 

An old man approached him. "Are those motorbikes you two have out there?"

"Nope, just regular bike," Travis said.

"You mean those are pedal bikes?" the old man said incredulously. "Those sure are nice for pedal bikes. Where are you riding them?"

Travis said, "We're riding them from Seattle to San Francisco."

The old man was astounded. "Seattle to San Francisco? And you ended up in Aberdeen?!? Son, you must have taken a wrong turn."

And Travis thought, 'Yes, yes we did.'

Quinault Rainforest

Sunrise with the frigid foggy coast, sunset at a clear warm lake. I am confused about how this happened, but I guess this is a common occurrence in this part of Washington. 

We said bye to Calvin, sure that we would see him again, and layered up for the morning's ride. It was foggy, cold, and very grey. But then about an hour and a half into the ride, the fog cleared right on and the temperature skyrocketed. All layers were removed and sunscreen was applied. And then we rode bikes through a depressing landscape of logged trees and junk tree farms. For a long time.

Quinault Rainforest came up quickly. We stayed at a Forest Service walk in campground, only five tent spot right on Quinault lake. We went for a quick swim, had some R&R time, and then went to explore the tiny tourist town of Quinault. 

First stop was an extremely depressing museum. The artifacts were great-- mostly donated items from longtime residents, like a silk wedding dress made from a WWII soldier's parachute, woven pine needle Native baskets, and iron homesteader tools. But this town, like almost every other town in the peninsula, was founded on logging. The photos from the logging display were like a gamesman's trophy room, but instead of elegant mounted antelope or ferocious stuffed tigers, the trophies were Douglas firs 18 feet in diameter. Here's a tree that's been growing for 1000 years, and we are so stoked that we killed it! 

These rainforests in Washington comprise over 60% of the world's temperate rainforests. The giant Douglas firs, Western Hemlocks, Sitak spruces, and Western Red cedars that grow in this little valley are literally the largest and oldest in the world. The most depressing part is that before the clear cut logging in the early 1900s, the giant trees left today were only half the size of some of the trees that were cut down in the past. 

Yes, the Forest Service and timber companies do replant the felled trees. But this is a rainforest that receives an average of 12 feet of rain annually. All of the nutrients that have built up over millennia leach out of the soil when there isn't a vast system of tree roots to hold it in place. When the new trees are planted, they get sick and die from lack of fertility, and the loggers cut them down prematurely because they're dying. 

This is the problem with coming to visit America's last wild places: I'm simultaneously confronted with the larger-than-life wonder of these places and the giant human fuck ups that ensure that these natural places will probably never EVER be what they once were. Can you imagine a Northwest without logging? Florida's springs without fertilizer pollution? The way water used to taste, the way air used to smell? The mistakes of the past make it truly unfair for people alive today, and I really feel sorry for the next generation.

Well alright! With that downer train of thought, I leave you with this beautiful sunset on a very pretty, easy riding day. I'll perk up for my observations tomorrow, I promise. 

To the Coast!

Travis has been reading this bike blog of a guy touring the same route as us, and according to this dude, he wakes up at 5:30 every morning (just like he always does) and goes for a one to two mile jog to warm up his legs before biking. 

OKAY OVERACHIEVER. 

If we don't set an alarm, we sleep for 11 hours. Which is exactly what happened this morning. I have visions of getting up and out of camp before 10am, but after breakfast, breaking down camp, and deciding where we're riding that day, it takes us about two hours to get on the road. 

We had a special treat this morning because we camped on a river, and I got buck naked and bathed myself in it without getting spotted by a stranger. I felt like a water nymph in a medieval tale. By the way, neither of us have had a truth bathing since we left Haley's house (gulp).

And where are the pictures of what we biked through today? There aren't any, except for one, because we biked through timber land and clear cuts. 

With our late departure time, we were hard pressed to book it to a campground, with the added urgency weekend competition. We had our sights on the overflow site at Kalaloch campground on the coast, which we reached at twilight. 

Kalaloch was full as we expected, and on our way down to the beach overflow campsites we were stopped by a park ranger in an SUV with police lights. He was very stern, saying that the beach camping was NOT in fact overflow for Kalaloch, and in any case it was full. Our ONLY CHANCE for a night's rest was to go back to Kalaloch and ask the ranger on duty VERY NICELY if we could pretty please stay in one of the emergency spots, which is usually reserved for people who try and pull up to the campground at midnight, NOT for cyclists with poor planning. Now that I'm thinking about it, what exactly is the difference between our cyclist poor planning and a motorized vehicle with poor planning? Travis says there's no difference, that dude just wanted to give someone a lecture. 

On the way back to Kalaloch, we ran into another cyclist named Calvin, who had received the same lecture. We waited at the ranger station to talk with the ranger on duty, and soon enough he pulled up in a ridiculous bubble-looking electric vehicle, struggled with the door, and asked if we were looking for a place to stay. We relayed our tale of the stern ranger, and the nice park ranger said that he's a ranger who thinks he's a cop, and there would have been no problem with us staying at the beach campsites if stern ranger hadn't bothered us. Soon enough he had us and Calvin set up at a perfectly nice emergency campsite, and he tipped his goofy ranger hat at us, saying we really shouldn't miss the ranger program tonight, it's gonna be a good one. 

We learned a lot about bald eagles tonight.