Clear Cut Choices

Clear cut.

It isn't always.

I was watching Axemen on TV and it brought back some memories of growing up in a logging town. In the course of a summer an entire hillside would be gone, yet it was replanted, carefully and with provisions for the future so that the resources would not be gone forever. It was known as Clearcutting, or clearfelling, a controversial forestry/logging practice in which most or all trees in a harvest area are cut down.

It was a much debated practice. though it was often used by foresters as a method of mimicking disturbance and increasing primary successional species like poplar, willow and black cherry in North America. Clearcutting was also proven to be effective in creating animal browsing and habitat areas, that in nature would be created by natural stand replacing disturbances such as fires, avalanche or large scale windthrow.


Yet, for all the years I lived there, and all the years I've traveled back to see it, the hills aren't bare, replanted trees are seeking the sun and thriving, and as evidenced by my morning temperature of 29 degrees in late March this year, global warming has not ensured.

But the practice is, and always will be much controversial. Not in keeping with the term itself.

Clear cut. -clear and certain, so that there is no doubt about something.

Few things in life are.

In a small dish on my desk desk is a rough gemstone. My Mom and I both collected gemstones, so they are something I've received as gifts since childhood, some beautiful beyond measure. This one is plain but it has history. It's edges are sharp, defined, it's color muted. Given to me when I was just a young girl by someone who once laid the cold stone on my hand, as a memento of a fine day, as his eyes looked off into the distance to a place that would not include me. There was a good age difference between us. I was headstrong and fiery and in love for the first time and he was tired of doing battle with women, with a lot of things. I think we both knew that if we pursued it further the relationship would turn as sharp and as brittle as glass, but it didn't make the end any easier on me. I'd lost my innocence that summer, not to be regained.

I still keep the stone, and occasional pick it up and hold it, the weight in my hand real, tangible, carrying with it the weight of astonishing clarity.

I think with a brain that is both artist and scientist, the logical part of me making decisions based on a summary of tangents, rules, lines and engineering. Yet my heart tends to run on up ahead into the traffic, shouting into the wind. I put the stone down where it lay on some dried yellow flowers, a reminder of clear thinking, hard choices, tears that can carve the hardest stone.

Clear Cut - clear and certain.

I went out to see Brigid Jr, up in the mountains in the West not too long ago. I'd not driven across the country in a while, though I've been a transplant from the West for over 20 years.

What surprised me was the desolation. Not a landscape which by design is laid bare of anything but the most fertile soil you can imagine. It was empty, boarded over retail shops. Gas stations closed, hotels closed. Even the larger restaurants there along a highway sparse of traffic, closed. This is a picture you do not see on the evening news, the failures of so many business, farms struggling, hard working families watching everything they've worked their lives for burned on a pyre of socialist ideology.

As the road passed underneath the hood, weathered billboards loomed, See the largest prairie dog in the world! The sign a proclamation that even the most jaded traveler would smile at. Stuffed? Alive? No, the giant prairie dog was cement, a fact not made clear until the tourist has shelled out some money. Then, 20 more miles to the 5 legged cow. A sign so weathered that I figured that cow is long dead, or made of paper mache. I didn't stop but I did shake my head as to the gullibility of people.

I had a lot of time on the drive to think. About where I was headed, where our country was headed, and the many turns and twists of a life that brought me to this road here, now.

Clear cut.

I like driving West, instead of flying. There's no rush; I keep the horizon in my window but still look down, savoring the journey. The tumbled landscapes of glacier stone, and great pristine rivers, thin as a strand of pearls from up here. The day proceeds in the immaculate sameness of hours bathed in the sun's warm honey. Thoughts flow, only interrupted by a scan for traffic, a stop for gas. My truck hums along, carrying me with it, carrying my thoughts as I forge West, of tears, of laughter I've not known since youth, of love, of mechanical, rhythmic memories of the past that I carried with me as I started this journey. Memories that now, alight something within me I haven't thought of in years.

Before I knew it I was in the mountains, looking at areas of new growth timber, areas of fire, from man or nature I did not know, scorching the earth in it's path. It's fall, the fire season has passed, those polished days of heat. Those awaited cool mornings that gives themselves up to surreal afternoons, the land surrendering its thirst to the amber ale of autumn.

In what now seems a lifetime ago, there was a loss of a fire crew, one that has probably been forgotten to most. A well used tanker was transporting some fire flight and ground crew back in. The aircraft was loaded with workers finishing up a shift and getting back to home, to a well earned night of relaxation and fun. It was my second year working for the Forest Service, summer employment while I was in college. As a teenager I was too in thrall with the aerial adventure to even think about the risks in what we did each day, let alone be tired, but I'd been feeling out of sorts for the last few weeks, weary and sick to my stomach, so I declined the invite to meet up with them and settled in for a book and a nap.

A dear friend was on board, a mentor and a fellow pilot, but that night he was just catching a ride in the back and called to say goodbye to me after he'd gotten off the phone with his girlfriend. We'd just gone out to dinner the previous week to celebrate his upcoming interview with United Airlines, the goal through which he'd survived several summers of sweat, dirt and danger, a goal others in his small town said he's never obtain. "I'll call you in a few days, after the interview. . . . fly safe kiddo" he said and hung up. Soon they were airborne as the visages of smoke from the days fires clung to the ridges like a sigh.

I hung up the phone and opened the book I was reading and an hour later he was dead, the plane down in a fiery ball. Afterward I tried to find something to explain what had happened—was there a mechanical failure? Was there a thunderstorm hidden in smoke and encroaching dark? But the night was ordinary. It usually is, I think, when your life implodes. Most people aren't doing anything special when tragedy reaches out and catches them by the sleeve. An investigation was launched, fingers were pointed, probable cause debated. I didn't care about that. All I cared about was that colleagues were gone, with my best friend from the airport, only 26 years old.

The funerals were full of pilots and Forest Service personnel. Solemnly laying them to rest, we then took to the skies with a small salute of loss. . . that is. . . all the pilots but me. For an hour after J's service I had received a call from my doctor, for I'd finally scheduled an exam to see why I was feeling so bloated and tired the last couple of months.

I was pregnant.

When the words passed from the doctor's assistant to my brain, cold air slipped down my body, and the room grew close. I thought I was so tough, so experienced for my age and there I was, a scared, unwed teenager with a cupboard full of Ramen noodle and $75 to my name. I sat and cried, passively and plaintively, like a small child in the dentists waiting room.

You never know when something is going to happen to change your life. You think fate will arrive with fanfare, but instead it comes in the most ordinary of circumstances. You expect a large brown bear but it's naught but a spider, dangling from a beam, twisting and turning in the wind, striking you with the smallest of touch, that can bring either wonder or intense fear. Most people are usually not prepared for either.

All I knew was I had to make a choice as what to do with my life, this baby. We make choices from such limited information. From the sweet words of lovers from slogans to campaign promises. How do you know how to make the right one?

After the crash, with this sudden change in my life, I made my choice, with only my heart to guide me. After I told my Dad, and he simply hugged me, I sat in a fuzzy yellow bathrobe, in my old room, on a little bed under childish rainbows painted on the walls. I simply sat motionless, breathing deep and steady until the sun began to set. It wasn't so much the sun setting but rather that the light simply condensed into a smaller smaller space, much like a damaged heart.

The wind gasped against curtains, a soft whoosh that I realized was my own breathing. My heart, my breath, my blood, all entwined with new life now in this quiet space. Even if I held my breath, her little heart would keep on beating.


So I did not make the choice that many would, the easy way out, as a full time student, the baby's father, older and already having been married and divorced, not wanting any part of us in his future.

No, there was only one choice for me, to provide this life within me with the best future possible. Rather than worry about the past and what I could not change, I learned to fight as the future progressed, knowing that most anything was possible if I put my mind to it. That was my friend's legacy to me, live strong, own up to your mistakes and work hard for your freedoms, for the end can come in a blink of the sun in your eyes, in a flash of fire.

And she was born on the cusp of the New Year. Because of a clear choice. One in which someone new and beautiful lay sleeping, dreaming new dreams all her own. I really didn't know how lacking in faith I had been until then. Her birth became my greatest hope. Her small being, my biggest act of courage, even as I let her go.

We all have chased the wind and danced with the flames, sometimes getting singed, sometimes being honed in the fire. Even now flames rage within our country that threaten to immolate the very liberties and security for which we worked hard for, paid for in toil and blood. Fighting fire is dangerous work, and those that have done it wonder if the gains of it ever balance the costs? Yet for those of us who have walked that path, they will always acknowledge that among the ruins, something bright and lasting can be found.

I pick up the crystal again from its little spot among dead flowers. The sun catches it and it burns with amethyst fire, clear and with purpose. Time to stop in to the city hall in my new little town and update my voter registration. For based on the fires I see on the horizon, there are still choices to be made, choices that more than ever, are clear cut.