Olympia, Eugene, Corvallis, Bend and Ashland

Back in our wild Siskiyou Mountain home, the Oxygen Collective shifts directions from tour mode to organizing mode, continuing to build the campaign to save this bioregion from extreme salvage logging. The last leg of our tour brought us back from the wet shores of Puget Sound, through Olympia, Corvallis, Eugene, and East over the Cascades to the dry expanses surrounding Bend, and around the still-snowy peaks to home again. While faced with some of our most challenging spaces and smallest turn-outs, we continued to collect hundreds of letters and to meet new allies.

In Olympia, we were escorted to an 'undisclosed location' for a pirate radio interview with DJ Megawatti on Radio Free Olympia. Our presentation that night was in the cavernous lobby of the Evergreen State College library, and managed to attract around fifty people to come out early on a rainy Sunday night. The next day, we parked the bus in the center of Red Square, 'got stilty', and talked to throngs of students, many of whom were happy to write letters and postcards to their Washington senator Patty Murray. We drained the local CFN biodiesel pump into the bus the next day, and pointed our steel chariot south.

In Eugene, we set up during the Earth Day events at the University of Oregon, where we performed that night to a smaller crowd than anticipated. Though we connected with old friends and seasoned forest defenders, we hope that more people in Eugene can become involved in defending the relatively close Siskiyou Mountains this summer. Maybe Priscilla and crew will return for a second show.

Our second night in Eugene we enjoyed a wonderful home cooked meal put over the top with a decadent array of dessert delicacies from Sweet Life Bakery. Later, we returned to the university to see Julia Butterfly Hill in a public forum and found many happy speech bubblers on their way out of the auditorium.

The Oxygen Collective spent Earth Day outreaching on the OSU campus in Corvallis and ended at an event on an organic farm tended by student volunteers. Here we found many people already familiar with the issue of salvage logging in the Biscuit, including some students who had just covered the topic in class that day. While to some our views were controversial, we continued to find widespread support for the protection of old-growth and roadless forests on our public lands.

At OSU the next day, six of us paid a visit to Dr. John Sessions at his office in the forestry department. Dr. Sessions, a Ph.D. in 'Forest Economics' and architect of massive logging and plantation-creation projects in the tropical rainforests of Malaysia and the Amazon, is the author of the 'Sessions Report' that argues for salvage operations in the Biscuit Fire affected area. Because this report contends that there are 2.5 billion board feet of marketable timber left by the fire, the Bush Administration's current proposal to log one half billion board feet almost appears reasonable.

After an hour of intense dialogue and a gift of a burnt stick from the Biscuit Fire itself, Dr. Sessions offered to participate in a public debate at the upcoming Society of American Foresters conference in Ashland. We agreed to arrange for a debate and it will be taking place on campus at Sou on Thursday May 6th at 10 am in Science room 118. Anyone interested in the issue of extreme logging this summer should make a point to attend this event and the other opportunities this week to have our voices heard when the timber beasts gather to advance their agenda.

We presented our Corvallis show at Intaba's Kitchen, an organic restaurant where an earth mother-faced cob oven provides the backdrop to a covered outdoor seating area.

After crossing the snowy crest of the Cascades, we arrived in Bend for our last show on the road and our smallest audience yet, at the Central Oregon Community College. We were hosted by some of the dedicated few activists who monitor timber sales in the Deschutes National Forest and throughout eastern Oregon. We shared solidarity and admiration at their hard work in these vast areas threatened by many logging projects that receive little or no attention from the environmental community. As the 'Biscuit Fire recovery Plan' could set dangerous precedents in the new rollbacks in environmental protection laws, we hope that our concerted efforts to stop the effects of the 'Healthy Forest Initiative' here in the Siskiyou will pay off for these overworked folks as well.

Crossing to the east side of the Cascades offered us an opportunity to spend our last days on tour in a different type of ecosystem ? dry ponderosa forests where the beautifully cold Deschutes River winds its way down from the snow-capped peaks. The Clark's Nutcracker, Mountain Chickadee, Pygmy Nuthatch, Gray Jay, and Williamson's Sapsucker are a few of the birds unique to the high mountains and dry east side forests that rounded out our list to 111 species in three weeks of traveling the West Coast.

Our homecoming event in Ashland was the keynote event Saturday night of the Act For the Earth Conference at Southern Oregon University. A diverse cross section of our community came out for our last show and it was one of our best receptions of the tour. It is rejuvenating to come full circle back to the Siskiyou, and the evening was charged with enthusiasm and inspiration. We are glad to have the whole show filmed for cable access broadcasting. Parts of our show will be playing on local cable channels in the Portland area, Eugene and across Southern Oregon from Klamath Falls to Medford and Grants Pass.

After a whirlwind month on the road, we return exhausted and exhilarated, loving each other and this land more than ever before. We have already hit the ground running as members of the collective are advancing their work within and beyond the O2 to work with Greenpeace, Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center, National Forest Protection Alliance and others. This summer promises to thrust Southern Oregon to center stage in a heightened national debate on forest policy and public lands management. These mountains are this year?s epicenter of forest defense-and we will be here advocating for the wild creatures and intact ecosystems we draw our life energy from! Stay tuned to this site and to our allies in the region, and get ready to come to the Siskiyou this summer!

Posted by Forrest at May 4, 2004 09:23 AM | Category(s): Fire & Forests Roadshow