THE GREEDY CALL IT "PROGRESS"

THE GREEDY CALL IT "PROGRESS"
While there are many other elements in salvaging a livable world, herein I am concentrating on the trees that I believe are essential for breath.

I grew up vomiting mud, the product of the air thick with the dust, the product of a Government controlled by greed, dust now sterile, but which had once nourished 6 million buffalo.

I was 13 the day the family car rolled out of the dust and entered something I had only to this moment read about. The car stopped. Dreamlike I walked into forest. I touched my first evergreen tree. I felt the bark. I took a deep breath of the sparkling clean air and felt energy flowing into my lungs. Three months later, my first of my many arguments for the preservation of forests appeared in print: the story of my walk from a world greed had destroyed into one, at that time, still able to support life.


In Seattle's Federal Building it was my turn to speak. The room was filled to overflowing. The crowd parted. I picked up the PA system and began: I spoke of a public park, the last spot we had where we could still experience a night lit only by stars, listen for the little things that search for food at night instead of the whine and roar of traffic, and smell air perfumed with sun soaked earth and grass and trees and leaves. Boeing's Vice-President rose next. I wonder how many heard the greedy haste in his voice.

Boeing wanted it. Boeing got it. Boeing destroyed it.

My good friend, Fred Rounds, The Woodcutter of Cougar Mountain, gone now like all my other friends, hung the plaque by his door. Carved into it with meticulous craft were the words: "Please God. Protect us from more "Progress."