Millions of years ago, when the climate was moist and warm, redwood forests covered more than half of what is now the United States. Following subsequent ice ages, most redwood forests were replaced by prairies and hardwood and evergreen forests. Fortunately, the redwoods were still able to grow along a five hundred mile stretch of the west coast, from the San Francisco Bay to the mouth of the Rogue River in Southern Oregon. For the last ten thousand years, the California redwood forests flourished in harmony with the hunter-gatherer cultures of Native Americans living amidst them.
When Europeans came to settle the northern California coast during the nineteenth century, they found themselves transported into a magical world. They were surrounded by the largest plants on earth. Shrubs and giant ferns formed a moist groundcover beneath the trees. Delicate plants grew here too--the pastel redwood orchid; redwood sorrel; twisting wax myrtle, and countless other beautiful species.
The fog shrouded coastal forests stood like giants over the land, sheltering hundreds of varieties of birds and mammals. The ethereal blue heron seemed like a messenger from another world. The marbled murrelet "flew" underwater while pursuing fish, and built nests in the crowns of old-growth trees. High above the earth, the canopy floated like a green cloud, cradling these nests far from sight. The red-headed, pileated wood-pecker poked the trunks of old trees for its food. Coho and steelhead salmon filled the rivers and streams. The California red-backed vole feasted only on underground forest truffles. Roosevelt elk, bobcats, and black bears filled the forests with life.
How did the settlers respond to these glorious redwood forests? The only value they recognized was the economic value of the wood. A terrible holocaust befell these magnificent trees, as they were cut in large swathes and great numbers. After over one hundred years of intensive logging, more than ninety-six percent of the redwood forests are gone--and with them, the plants and animals that lived there.
And what has been fashioned out of these towering redwood trees? While I have not heard of and cannot cite a scientific study of the "use cycle" of redwood manufactured products by Americans, I can share my own observations of the general trend. Nearly forty years ago, I moved to Long Island, New York. It was a newly built suburban community, part of the post World War II home building boom growing mushroom-like around cities throughout the country. We kids were occupied by fads like hoola hoops and yo-yos, while our parents had fads of their own, like big automobiles with giant tailfins and redwood patio furniture. Every family in my neighborhood, including ours, purchased a redwood picnic table and benches. Those with higher incomes displayed their wealth in that era of conspicuous consumption by buying even more redwood objects, such as matched sets of redwood lawn chairs and adjustable lounges with redwood wheels, and charcoal grills with redwood trim. Many families, including both of my neighbors on either side of my house, even erected redwood fences which ran clear around their one-quarter acre properties.
And what has become of our national investment in redwood bric-a-brac? After all, redwood lumber is famed for its resistance to rot. Surely, one might suppose, these fences, chairs, and tables will last hundreds of years, perhaps giving some utilitarian justification for cutting down these thousand year old redwood trees. If one looks in my neighborhood to see how well the redwood items are holding up, the search will be in vain, because there is almost no redwood to be seen. Look in every backyard on my block, or for miles around, (and I know because I have looked), and you will find virtually no redwood where only twenty years ago there was redwood everywhere. Where did it all go? I know exactly where most of it is.
A mile from my home lies the infamous Old Bethpage Garbage Dump and Incinerator Complex. Winning distinction as one of the most toxic landfills in New York State, it was closed years ago. There is concern of infiltration of toxic liquid into our Long Island ground water aquifer. That dump is the resting place for thousands of pieces of redwood furniture thrown out by homeowners and collected by the town on garbage pick-up day over many years during the 1970s and 1980s. Furniture I saw heaped on the curb in decaying pieces would have been first burned in the incinerators and then deposited as ash in the landfill. On weekends, homeowners were allowed to drive their cars up the manmade mountain of garbage and dump their own trash, which often included whole pieces of redwood furniture, directly into the landfill. So, there it is, hundreds of millions of years of evolution, hundreds of thousands of years of standing redwood forests, individual redwood trees over one thousand years of age, entire redwood forests, buried in the municipal garbage dump.
That is how we Americans have treated the gift of the redwood forests with which nature has blessed our country. We chopped ninety-six percent of them down, used the manufactured redwood items for perhaps twenty years, and then tossed them out. How could people have been so callous with such a precious, finite resource as old growth redwood? Did they think it would last forever? The problem is, people did not think; they simply consumed, certain in the feeling that there would always be more furniture or fence material when they were through with the redwood. In that they were correct, for my neighbors have now erected chain link and cedar fences to replace the discarded redwood ones, and plastic resin patio furniture is now all the rage on Long Island.
Some time ago, I began collecting pieces of decaying redwood furniture when I saw them in people's weekly trash piles. I simply could not bear to see these remnants of once tall ancient redwoods tossed out as useless garbage. Still, there is no way these pieces of redwood can be put back two hundred feet in the air, high in the ancient redwood forests, where they came from and truly belong.
This article was originally written in the early 1990s in hopes of saving the redwoods. With thanks for editing and encouragement to Elaine Weiss, member of the Board of Directors of Save America's Forests.
Carl Ross is Co-Director of Save America's Forests, a nation-wide coalition based in Washington, DC, working to protect and restore America's wild and natural forests. Contact: Carl Ross, Save America's Forests, 4 Library Court SE, Washington, DC 20003, phone (202) 544-9219, fax (202) 544-7462.
©1999 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1999
Volume 9, Number 2
A Sense of Place