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The Irrational Forest

By David Feela

I suspect that folklore has always contributed something dark and evil to the primeval forest, which partly explains why early Americans logged our trees so quickly and carted them away. With a steady diet of stories like Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood, our lumber babies grew up to be barons who could not sleep properly until every patch of wilderness had been laid flat.
I suspect, too, that children who have not been rocked to sleep in the deep cradle of our national forests grow up with an irrational sense of what living on this planet means. They confuse recreation with creation, believing that wilderness access has something to do with improving our public lands. They forget that our first churches were cathedrals of living limbs buttressing a blue sky. They even think the word green is a political statement, not a color by which we judge the vitality of the earth's lungs.
I had the chance to drive through the Olympic National Rain Forest. I'd never been in a rain forest. The weather cooperated nicely, because it rained hard, a torrent of water during the entire trip, which explained so much better than words why the area is called a rain forest. My destination was Port Angeles, Wash., but I drove a hundred miles out of my way just to satisfy my obsession for trees. I wanted to be immersed in them like a fish is immersed in the ocean.
Of course, winter on the Northwest coast always means rain. For those who prefer a more traditional season, there are mountains in the cold distance like Mount Rainer where skiers gather, but snow has never been an attraction for me. After all, I was born and raised in a place my brother still refers to as Minnesnowta. I prefer summer, the slow green growth of timber, the tall limbed reach of lumber. Ski resorts make money cultivating snow, an entirely renewable resource if there is no drought, and while I'm certainly not against using our forests as resources for growth, I'm soundly opposed to growth that outdistances our resources.
At Port Angeles the trees gave way to an ocean of water and a tide of travelers disembarking or boarding the ferry that shuttles between the States and Canada's Vancouver Island. My plans included a visit to The Butchart Gardens - 55 acres of premier floral show gardens, cultivated on the site of a turn-of-the-century cement limestone quarry. There's a Rose garden, a Japanese garden, a Sunken Garden, a Piazza, a Star Pond, an Italian Garden, and a Mediterranean Garden. There is no rain forest.
I walked for more than four hours through these gardens, impressed by them all. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera. I realize how stupid it seems to visit one of the most famous floral gardens in the world without a camera, but the few images I retain exist because they entered through the lens on my cornea and been archived in my brain. If I scratch my head with my finger to remember a particular garden arrangement, then I assume the memory is digital.
But the memory of the rain forest has stayed rooted inside me, just like my childhood. No camera lens could have captured it. Oddly, I had my camera with me at the time I passed through the rain forest, but even then I realized the futility of harvesting such a place with mere pixels.
Each time I drive past a sign designating the boundary of a national forest, I feel a tiny pang of trepidation. As a young Boy Scout I once misread such a sign, thinking it announced the entrance to an irrational instead of a national forest. I asked my scoutmaster who was driving the van if we were crazy to be going in there. He glanced toward me with a puzzled expression.
"When you grow up" he said, "you'll understand we'd be crazy if we didn't."

David Feela writes and writes from Cortez, Colo.