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The Bulldozer And The Tree

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I used to play in the orange groves
Till they bulldozed all the trees
Then I’d stand among those dead stumps
And smell the blossoms on the breeze…
— Dave Alvin, “Dry River”* 

*

I don’t know why I like to drive ’em like I do
You know it ain’t nothin’ but 
A hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds of steel
Could be the money, babe, could be the power
Could be I love the way it feels, could be I love the way it feels

— Guy Clark, “Heavy Metal”**

Our house sits on an acre of land in a forested subdivision about four miles west of Sisters, Oregon. Most of it must be drainfield, because it grows a dense jungle of long, thick-bladed grass. I’m talking grass up to my waist — and I stand 6′4″; grass that grows like it’s on steroids. A couple of times a year, I get after it with a gas-powered weed-whacker and about a mile of line. I hate every second of that chore. Essayist Paul Kingsnorth would probably tell me I would find the work much more congenial if I deployed a good scythe, sweeping the grass down in artful windrows in a personal, connected manner as old as agriculture. I admire Kingsnorth and enjoy his writing a great deal, but I’m unpersuaded.

Far from fantasizing about heroic medieval simplicity, my imagination strays to the sinister eastern tones of Robbie Krieger’s guitar and the whomp-whom-whomp of helicopter gunship rotors. All I want to see is that jungle of grass going up in the hellish orange explosion of a napalm strike.

That would, indeed, smell like victory.

*

I recently re-read Kingsnorth’s essay Dark Ecology. The Englishman is working in the same territory we are here at Running Iron Report — trying to find a path to a satisfying, meaningful way of life in the face of a great unraveling of environment and culture.

Kingsnorth neatly encapsulates the “progress trap” that has us locked in its jaws — fabulously wealthy yet feeling deeply impoverished.

“…progress is a ratchet, every turn forcing us more tightly into the gears of a machine we were forced to create to solve the problems created by progress. It is far too late to think about dismantling this machine in a rational manner—and in any case who wants to? We can’t deny that it brings benefits to us, even as it chokes us and our world by degrees. Those benefits are what keep us largely quiet and uncomplaining as the machine rolls on…”

He is deeply — and I think rightly — suspicious of “greens” who believe we can bioengineer our way out of the looming crisis of extinction and climate change.

“What does the near future look like? I’d put my bets on a strange and unworldly combination of ongoing collapse, which will continue to fragment both nature and culture, and a new wave of techno-green ‘solutions’ being unveiled in a doomed attempt to prevent it. I don’t believe now that anything can break this cycle, barring some kind of reset: the kind that we have seen many times before in human history. Some kind of fall back down to a lower level of civilizational complexity. Something like the storm that is now visibly brewing all around us. 

“If you don’t like any of this, but you know you can’t stop it, where does it leave you? The answer is that it leaves you with an obligation to be honest about where you are in history’s great cycle, and what you have the power to do and what you don’t. If you think you can magic us out of the progress trap with new ideas or new technologies, you are wasting your time. If you think that the usual “campaigning” behavior is going to work today where it didn’t work yesterday, you will be wasting your time. If you think the machine can be reformed, tamed, or defanged, you will be wasting your time. If you draw up a great big plan for a better world based on science and rational argument, you will be wasting your time. If you try to live in the past, you will be wasting your time. If you romanticize hunting and gathering or send bombs to computer store owners, you will be wasting your time. 

“And so I ask myself: what, at this moment in history, would not be a waste of my time?”

That’s the fundamental question, isn’t it? It’s the one we wrestle with at RIR. You can read Kingsnorth’s five tentative answers in the essay — I’ll shorthand them here:

• Withdrawing from the fray.

• Preserving nonhuman life.

• Getting your hands dirty.

•  Insisting that nature has a value beyond utility.

• Building refuges.

RIR is aligned with all of these tenets. And yet I cannot join Kingsnorth in his personal retreat. I don’t WANT to. Kingsnorth is enamored of a kind of medievalism; his “sweet spot” is in a pre-modern era, in a hayfield with a scythe. And, though he explicitly scorns living in the past, that is obviously the past he seeks to make present.

It’s not mine. For one thing, my brother got the entire DNA set on the whole lawn & garden care thing. He actually enjoys planning and executing a project that makes things look nice and orderly. Me, I’ve always been like the 18th Century Kentucky frontiersman Simon Kenton: Turn your back and I’ll drop the hoe and run for the hills. I’m the guy that never wants to mow the lawn. I like the idea of reverting to medieval level technology out there in the fields, but RIR is about what we do, not about what looks good on the page. A pre-industrial Shire ain’t my natural habitat.

My tradition hit its apogee squarely in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, which created the technological society and growth economy whose contradictions have packed our bags for us and sent us straight into “the storm that is visibly brewing around us.” And it all resonates in me at a deep, primal level. I love the baked pine needle scent of the forest on a summer day — and I also love the hot, wet, greasy stench of a steam train engine.

Rullman said it best in a conversation a few days ago:

“You love the bulldozer AND the tree.”

*

There are things you can’t unwind. I live in the personal and historical shadow of the particular “progress trap” I call the Frontiersman’s Paradox — the simultaneous love of the wild and the urge to tame it. The tree and the bulldozer. The great American scout and Rhodesian pioneer Frederick Russell Burnham expressed it thus:

“It is the constructive side of frontier life that most appeals to me, the building up of a country. When the place is finally settled I don’t seem to enjoy it very long.”

Sisters, Oregon, where the Running Iron Report is headquartered, illustrates the paradox perfectly. My wife and I came here in 1993 to live in the woods. I edit the local paper and I co-founded a music festival that brings thousands of people to town each September. This is good and satisfying work, but it contributed to Sisters being “discovered.”

Now there’s a great music scene — and traffic is heavy even on weekdays, and the Forest Service is going to launch a permit system for wilderness areas that are being loved to death by hordes of people, a lot of whom think of the wilderness as a playground and have little regard for it other than the amusement it can provide them.

Same shit I left behind in California a quarter-century ago. When I was in my 20s, you could decide on a whim to go climb Mt. Whitney. Now you have to get a permit and might have to wait a long time for an experience that features far too many people to be worthwhile.

I have participated in, contributed to, the same cycle the great A.B. Guthrie sang of in The Big Sky:

“…a band of men, the fur-hunters, killed the life they loved and killed it with a thoughtless prodigality perhaps unmatched.”

And we can’t just pull up stakes and move because the streams are trapped out or we see the smoke of a too-near neighbor’s cabin. Where are we gonna go? Jackson Hole? Hah! Jackson Hole which those prodigal fur hunters found in its primal state, is a rich man’s playground. It’s what Sisters and Bend is fixin’ to become.

I helped in a small way to create this fix, but I can’t do a damn thing, even in a small way, to change it, and it can’t be rolled back short of an economic crash. So…

What, at this moment in history, would not be a waste of my time?

*

I have no portentous manifesto to offer. I can’t say I’m really all that interested in a simpler way of life — not in the sense that Kingsnorth means anyway. Maybe a simple life in the style of that feisty gentleman Gus McRae , cuz he had it right all along…

“The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself.”

Here’s to you Gus McCrae.

None of that is a waste of time, nor is any of the other shenanigans Gus got up to. It takes a fair amount of what folks call “mindfulness” to stay focused on those everyday things, but there, grasshopper, lies the path of serenity. Still, no matter how mindful a life I lead, I know I’ll never look out on that acre of jungle without hearing gunship rotors and imagining the whiff of napalm in the morning.

 

 

*

**

Jim Cornelius

Jim Cornelius

Born in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Jim Cornelius grew up dreaming of distant frontiers, of mountain men, long hunters, African explorers. His older brother gave him a tattered copy of Allan W. Eckert’s The Frontiersmen, a biography of Simon Kenton, and the twig was bent. Graduated from...

Comments

  1. Matthew says

    Frankly, I roll my eyes at people who wish for the “good ole days” as much as people who believe every change is progress, and that progress doesn’t come at a high cost. It’s about striking balance, but the problem is everyone’s balance is going to be different.

    Reply

  2. tom says

    jim, there is a solution to your grass problem, but you might have to open your wallet?! find a goat herder & have her or him bring there herd and they will enjoy that salad growing in your way!

    Reply

  3. Cort Horner says

    Hallelujah, I have finally found a worthy scapegoat for all that Sisters has, is, and will become ?

    Scapegoat on and shoot straight, ya bastard. Sisters is better because of you and yours.

    Reply

  4. Saddle Tramp says

    Jim…
    Excellent piece!!
    I could not agree more with your opinions on everything. We want the best of both worlds, but mankind just can’t seem to stop from doing harm to each other or to the planet. I don’t want to give up the technology either be it heavy equipment or otherwise. It sure feels like we are doomed to the curse that has accompanied it though. That age old dilemma again. It seems more overwhelming and destructive than ever and it’s full potential has not even been unleashed yet. Take your moments of paradise as you can and where you can. Nothing is locked in. I just watched DIRTBAG: The Legend of Fred Beckey with an iTunes download last night. Most of us will not go to the extent to find what Fred Beckey did and to sustain it as long as he did. He not only climbed but he also wrote about it in exacting, interesting and scholarly fashion with great detail. I enjoyed the film a lot just because I know another Fred Beckey ain’t gonna come along again and seeing him reminds me of his singularity all the more. As for the rest of us we are caught betwixt and between. By the way I ran U.S. Hwy 395 all the way down from Reno to Hesperia on Monday. Mt. Whitney strikes a helluva profile. Always enjoy that ride. Such a difference of life on the eastern side of The Sierras as compared to the western side. Comparisons are always made between north and south, but east and west is just as distinct. Hell if I know the way out of our dilemma. I will yield (with hope) to someone who might offer a little of it. Of course this is just one of his quotes and he can be a little cynical himself. There is a very thin line between cynicism and skepticism. Who would have dreamed up the world we live in today? Not me. 

    “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

    — Albert Einstein 

    P.S. I don’t think Albert mowed any lawns, but you never know.

    Reply

      • Bob Fuller says

        I grew up in the San Fernando valley in the 40s-60s. It breaks my heart to see it now. I’ll add a couple of things to Gus’s list‑a good horse to ride in our beautiful forests and mountains and a good guitar to play some old songs. I hope urbanization waits till after I take my final breath.

        Reply

  5. Rick Schwertfeger says

    Pretty much in the same place. But I sure do like my air conditioning (remember, I’m in Austin), pickup truck, computer and full suspension mountain bike! And, I actually like cutting the grass with our rechargable electric lawn mower that pollutes less when running than a gas mower pollutes just sitting in the garage! (no off gassing)
    Dorothy L. Pillsbury said eloquently what I keep progressing towards when she stated that what she’d been looking for was “to live simply in beautiful natural surroundings with the mechanics of mundane living reduce to their absolute minimum.”
    It’s quite a process minimalizing from the life of a 21st century urban professional, but I’m on that path.

    BTW, it’s a wonderful, gentle, beautiful book, Dorothy L. Pillsbury, STAR OVER ADOBE, 1963. It’s about her life in Santa Fe, New Mexico between 1943 and 1962. I got it used from Powell’s.

    Reply

    • Jim CorneliusJim Cornelius says

      Thanks Rick.

      “to live simply in beautiful natural surroundings with the mechanics of mundane living reduce to their absolute minimum.”

      We could do worse.

      Reply

  6. Kevin Kay says

    John Michael Greer, over at Ecosophia.net, imagined a different sort of future in an anthologized series at his old Archdruid Report. He fleshed it out slightly in a book called Retrotopia. I know it sounds a little hippy dippy but he has some interesting ideas on backing up without giving up entirely.

    Reply

  7. SLM says

    It’s not like we weren’t warned quite awhile back. 

    Here’s something Edward Abbey wrote in 1978:

    “We all know who the Enemy is. The Enemy speaks to us all the time — from the radio, on the television, on billboards, in the newspapers and slick magazines, in the halls of Congress, at the state capitol, in city hall.

    “And the Enemy says, ‘Behold, how sleek and fat I have become. Am I not the wonder of the world? Am I not the richest and most powerful beast on earth? Would you turn against the thing which has enriched you, which has given you safety and security and comfort, which promises you still more wonders in the future — electronic toys, computerized thinking, a life air-conditioned from womb to grave, an existence of endless novelty, luxury, diversion, things and more things, a universe of sport and adventure and romance and travel in the softness of your armchair, the ease of your V‑8 four-wheel-drive wheelchair tourism, the sedation of your living room? A painless, discreet, sedated death? And all this for so little, so very little — merely for the price of some of your independence, a bit of your freedom, a little part of your manhood or womanhood, for only a little sacrifice of your humanity and honor. …’ ”

    Reply

  8. Marvin Minkler says

    Coming up through the green hills down from the Canadian Border up here in Vermont, I crest a turn and there off to the left some huge wind turbines slowly turning like giant pinwheels ugly against the fir and pine. Further down the hill on the other side to the right next to a large corn field, row after row of solar panels, where there once stood a dairy farm, and cattle grazed. I came back to where I was born to get away from it all, but it has a faster horse. Old, bit weary of the run now, I won’t withdraw. But, I don’t like it. One bit.
    Still have my evenings reading Abbey, Gary Snyder, and watching Lonesome Dove a few more times.

    Reply

      • Paul McNameePaul McNamee says

        “Manhattan Countryside” by the Bottle Rockets

        Well I live down in a valley
        Was prettiest around
        Living in an alley in the middle of downtown
        And I didn’t have to move
        To this big city
        You know I stayed right in my country home
        They built it all around me
        I used to love these hills they flattened
        For that highway 4‑lanes wide
        They’re making a Manhattan
        Out of my countryside

        Ain’t no use in crying much
        You don’t know what I’d do
        To go back to them woods
        They turned Hardee’s #2
        Well if I had a dollar for every tree cut down
        You know I’d buy out all these businessmen
        Cut down this whole town
        I used to love these hills they flattened
        For that highway 4‑lanes wide
        They’re making a Manhattan
        Out of my countryside

        Them motels on the horizon
        Really caught me by surprise
        Who has been advising all these
        Enterprising guys
        I ain’t got to promise
        But it hurts me some to say
        I was here ‘fore they was
        They’re driving me away
        I used to love these hills they flattened
        For that highway 4‑lanes wide
        They’re making a Manhattan
        Out of my countryside

        The sad, slow demo version;
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7t6MBjco0Q

        The angry electric version
        https://thebottlerockets.bandcamp.com/track/manhattan-countryside

        Reply

  9. Lane Batot says

    Gotta tend yer garden, Dr Pangloss.…..I like my modern contraptions too(having had to do without them, often enough, during my infamous career), as with my current love affair with my refrigerator Lagertha–but you can have them without destroying the planet in the process. And it’s ALWAYS good to know how to do things the “old way”, just in case you need to sometimes, and to keep some good perspective. As for that photo of the grass–I think it looks beautiful just as it is! But if you really need to cut it back, and hate mowing/weed-eating as do I, I WOULD consider fencing it off and getting some goats or sheep–I could elaborate in detail on my experiences with such were you seriously interested. One DOES have to tend to and care for any livestock too, but the RIGHT kind of goats and/or sheep are INCREDIBLY EASY and CHEAP to tend to, if you know what yer doing, and the only seriously expensive investment is the FENCING, which, done right the first time, never has to be done again(except for occasional, cheap repairs). Though it was pointed out to me where I lived before(by certain cynical folks) that I spent as much time tending my goats and sheep as other people did mowing, weed-eating and other landscaping, the DIFFERENCE is that I actually LOVE taking care of the critters, and hate and loath the mechanical, gassy methods of keeping the jungle at bay! Let me know if yer interested in details.…..

    Reply

      • Lane Batot says

        Well, there you go then–battle half won if tha Missus is all for it! I really do NOT understand why goats are not more popular just as PETS and companions–they are so EASY(with the right set up), CHEAP(after the fence erection) hardy, and potentially USEFUL(milk producers, grass and weed eaters, fertilizers), and just great entertainers and good company!).The Pygmy varieties take little space and will use doghouses happily for shelter. Larger varieties can be trained as competent pack animals, that eat whatever is around–no need to carry food for them!(I have an INCREDIBLY interesting and entertaining book on pack goats!). If you ever get serious about it, I’ll happily give you the lowdown on how to set up cheaply and easily with a coupla-goats-or-three(they are social herd animals that tend to be very unhappy without at least another goat or two around.….).I A LOT of myths and negativity unfairly levied at goats out there–probably why they are not more popular in the U. S. A. than they are. IF you are getting them to at least help keep yer grass down, I’d check and see IF they would even eat that type of grass first–probably would, but there are some things(believe it or not) goats WON’T eat–most prefer to be BROWSERS rather than grazers–sheep are the better grazers. I kept BOTH–pygmy goats and Barbados sheep–a more “natural” breed of sheep that needs no shearing(and far more sensible than most overly domesticated sheep–ALMOST as intelligent as the goats! Goats are VERY smart critters!) I had a large chunk of my mountain(STEEP!) property WELL FENCED(VERY important!) back in the day , and just shifted my little herd from one area to another as needed(they’s follow me to Hades and back so long as I was carrying a bucket of corn!), and I did not even OWN a mower or weed-eater in those days–the herd kept my steep property like a golf course 24/7! I just occasionally had to chop a weed or two down of a variety NO-ONE would eat. No briars, wild rose, kudzu, privett, poison ivy, ner NUTHIN’ survived the herd! In fact, those “noxious” plants were some of their FAVORITES! Even ate fallen leaves(goat potato chips!) so I never had to rake in the autumn, either! I presently have no goats or sheep, but ONLY because I have too many dogs! Far more expensive to keep!(much as I love them all.….) As my dog numbers dwindle(most of mine are quite old now) I AM planning on getting a coupla goats and/or sheep again–I fenced my property with this in mind years ago when I moved here–things just haven’t worked out just yet to acquire more. But I plan to be a semi-nomadic pastoralist again–never was much a one for agriculture mee-self.…

        Reply

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