Out In The Woods of Isengard

hope rhodie bud march 1 06
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

It is 75 degrees today and I actually got up off my lazy (and increasingly large) butt and took myself & Theo out to Bent Creek for a nice hike. I was hoping the dogwoods would be in bloom, so I took a trail I rarely take, where I knew I'd seen dogwoods in early spring some years back. Unfortunately, the dogwoods are not in bloom because there are no dogwoods left on that trail. They've been logging again out at Bent Creek - it is, after all, National Forest, "managed forest" and so they log. To log they build big gravel roads, and they leave devastated, storm tossed firewood behind. They leave the rhododendrons, too - I guess noone wants rhodie wood, or perhaps they think it is a screen to the devastation.

I understand that people need wood. I understand the concept of the managed forest, although, let's face it, a tree farm, however organic, is not a forest, but that doesn't stop me from feeling like I have wandered into Isengard when I round a corner on the mountain trail and find logging wrack, a tree graveyard, thick spongy ground that's a haven for copperheads and little else and on a very visceral level I want Ents. I want the voice of the trees to come out and say something, preferably something loud and doom laden that will scare the shit out of trespassers with chain saws and the latest tree death technology, and I mean that literally. I do not, while we're at it, want Congress to sell these lands to private developers, who are even worse than loggers. At least I know, from previous experience with Saruman and his saw wielding orcs, that the logged land will recover - at least to some extent. It sure as hell won't recover when there's a McMansion or a MallWart on top of it.

Ah, but this is sad, and we shouldn't be sad, because yeah, the logging is there, but so is this rhodie bud, hope for spring, and the very first butterfly of the season. He was black, which always worries me, because in some Moomin book or other Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden talked about the first butterfly being an omen for the summer to come, with a gold one meaning a great summer. Mine are always black. Of course. But perhaps I'll take that as either the accident of geography that it totally is, or an homage to my artsy black wearing soul. A dark sophisticated summer, that I could deal with.