From the big trees to the land of shaved mountains
We are now in Oregon. There is quite a difference from National/State/County protected forests of northern California to the lumber farming SouthWest corner of Oregon.
All of the roads have a thin hedge of beautiful trees that give you a nice forested feeling, but when you get a peek through a bare patch you can see that the hills are clearcut for as far as you can see. It feels like a holleywood set. The hills look like New Hampshire looked in 1907.
I suspect that "farming" is not quite the term that I should be using here. There doesn't seem to be ANY reforestation being done. Just cut and run. There are spots where you can see just how tall the trees used to be because they don't actually clearcut, they leave behind the diseased or damaged trees or ones that are just too thin to make good lumber. These tall reminders of what "used to be" tower above the scrub that blankets the hills after a number of years.Oregon seems to be a beautiful state, but the clearcutting takes some getting used to. It is similar to passing by the strip-mines in other states. There is a product to be sold, there are people to buy the product, and there isn't a lot of incentive for a company to reuse the same resources like there is with a farmer that has to use the same fields year after year. The trees will grow back, but there are no signs of planned forestry here like you see in other parts of the country. They just move on to a new area.
