Thoughts of a Generational Native.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how long you have to live here before you are an Old-Timer. I don't know, but here is some of the ways I, and many native people think.

First, I consider myself to be an environmentalist of the first order. I love the trees, and the forests, and all the critters. But, I think of myself as being part of the environment. I believe that; "There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. … Henry David Thoreau said that. I also believe that I should put back, replace, or make something better for what I took to build my house.

Being one that lives my beliefs, my wife and I built our own house. We didn't built it it the sense that we ran around with a clipboard and a blueprint doing a lot of pointing and directing. We built in the sense that we cut every board and drove every nail. We wired, plumbed and painted it. Janis (my wife) nailed off the whole roofing by herself. I guess that she thinks a lot like me. We have an abundance wild plants and critters around our house, and they seem to thrive. That is one of the most enjoyable things about living here where we live.

What some people may not know, but they will realize that it is true, if they give it a small amount of thought, is that we have more biomass (trees, brush, grass) right now than we have had in recent history. The Indians and Mother Nature used to burn any group of trees standing close enough together to support a fire. The routine fire stripping of the weak and diseased trees and plants was a very healthy method of cleaning the forest. I have to smile a little just thinking about an Indian person trying to take out a modern day burn permit. “Yes ma'am, we only want a permit for a small burn. We only intend to burn from here to the coast.”

In the fall of the year lightning strikes would start numerous fires. There was no attempt to put them out. The fires burned until it rained, or they ran out of fuel. Ray Raphael made reference in his book “Two People, one Place” to the early Spanish explorers being afraid to come ashore, because of all of the fires on land. They said that it looked like “Hell” at night with fires everywhere.

The Indian People were very mobile, and they would outflank or outrun a fire. The new shoots that sprang up after a fire were eaten as food or weaved into baskets. The Indian people thought of fire as part of the Earths renewal. Many legends were told about fire. The legend of the Phoenix Bird becoming old and burning up, then rising, young and renewed out of the ashes, is nothing more than a story about the cleansing nature of fire, and the renewal that happens from it's ashes.

The Indian people honored what they took from nature. When they killed a deer for food, they had a ceremony to honor the deer before they ate it. They gave no thoughts of becoming vegetarians. But, they realized that they had taken something from nature, and they knew that the fires that they started caused the sprouts to grow that the deer ate. That was their way of giving back for what they took. Their fires killed the bugs that ate their acorns. Their fires open up the forest floor and made for healthy trees. Any diseased tree would burn. Trees with healthy bark, and ones that were not crowded, would survive. It's no wonder that they had legends like “The Phoenix”.

The ground on which we stand on the North Coast, is some of the most dynamic land in the world. The Earth keeps heaving and pushing the land up from the old sea floor, and our winter storms form our canyons by eroding and washing away the dirt and rock back into the sea. If you simply open your mind and think about it, you can feel the process happening. I really mean that. I know that I'm not the only one that feels the connectedness to our “Place”. I see it in Kym Kemp's Photography, I know that she feels the North Coast in her very being. One of my good friends, Diana Totton, expressed it better than anyone that I've ever heard. At her Citizen of the Year party, she was taking about what it meant to her to be here on the north coast. One of the things that separates her from many others, is that fact that she knew the feeling of standing on the top of Kings Peak after it had grown 16 inches taller in one of the many earthquakes that happen here. She mentioned her visceral feelings, to be part of, and standing on top of one of fastest growing mountains in the world. I knew that she felt that connectedness that many others miss. The shore line at Petrolia lifted out of the ocean about four feet in that same earthquake.

In our own lifetimes we have seen many changes to the North Coast. The ground at the entrance of the Eel river has raised through the years to the point that ships can no longer travel up th Eel River like they did back in the 1800's. Some day we may have an earthquake strong enough to lift the seashore, or drop the riverbed. We could end up with a new bay. Many Indian legends talk about Humboldt Bay when It was a field of grass. One of the legends say “When the sky rumbles move to low ground. When the ground rumbles move to the high mountains”. So they knew to get away from the lightning, and they knew about Earthquakes and Tidal Waves.
I remember when the Redwood trees were planted in the field south of Scotia. I remember when the young forest of trees where planted at the Mendocino county line, where Rastafarians camp during Reggae weekend. Many, many trees have been planted on the north coast, which is only right and fitting. Loss should always be replaced.

Getting rid of Maxam was a good thing. Selective cutting and sustained yield logging is the only environmentally acceptable method of harvesting trees to build our houses. You can double the production of a redwood forest by clear-cutting it. But clear-cutting is not good for the other plants and critters. We need to pay attention to that. If everybody has to play by the same rules it makes it fair. I have to include China and Canada in those rules of Fair-play. They should be as environmentally sound as we require our lumbermen to be, or we shouldn't allow their products into our country. Period!

I think that a railroad could be built to environmentally safe standards. Those slides that everybody has seen pictures of, were there before the railroad came. They were there while the railroad was here, and they are now busily reclaiming what the land thinks is it's own. If a railroad is built, they should realize that those slides have been sliding since the beginning of time, and they will have to go over, under or around them, because they are not going to stop them. Slides are a natural process of the Eel River system. That's where the Canyons come from. Erosion happens, and it is not caused by roads, logging or ranching, it only makes them more noticeable.

Anything that is taken from the land should be given back. It's only fair.

That's a few of my thoughts, I have more, but I'll stop here for a while. Maybe you have some thoughts yourself. Did you know some of the stuff that I mentioned? Do you agree or disagree?