I’ve written before that you have to be prepared for change if you ride the forests of Oregon. You can head out one day and find an entire mountain on your route clear cut.
I understand the value of commerce, but that still doesn’t change the hole wrenching in my gut when I stumble upon these scenes.
Riding one of my favorite local routes through the farmlands and orchards, I crested a hill — yeah, that hill that I complain about because it always kicks my ass — prepared to catch my breath and also have it pleasantly paused by the epic view of Hazelnut trees covering the rolling hills all the way out to a perfect little white church steeple gently reaching to the horizon.
Instead, it looked like a disaster zone. Piles of torn, uprooted trees 15-20 feet high, pushed together into neat rows.
My knees literally buckled.
I can only hope it’s a case of out with the old, in with the new. You know, new trees planted in their place.
What I dread instead is what folks commonly call progress. Earth movers flattening the land, streets carved in and houses sprouting up for the next five years as another neighborhood appears.
I lost my childhood home and the neat little woods across my grade school’s playground, where I saw my first frogs, turtles and even a muskrat in the pond there, when the government bought our house and replaced all that with a freeway dug 20 feet down.
Just before we moved from Tennessee, my favorite route through a grove of trees got clear cut. I stopped to remember the bobcat I saw scamper across the street, as well as the raccoons, opossum, deer and such.
Today’s question: When has one of your beautiful routes been blindsided by “progress?”
Out here in western Massachusetts we had a great mountain bike loop that went way out on state land. It turns out that a good portion of it was on private land and it was subsequently logged and then posted “foot traffic only!” for good measure. All good things must come to an end.