February 12, 2006
Where the Woods Used to Be (12 Gauge Serenade)
"It was a can of Skoal, a piece of cardboard and a bottle-cap."
"No, wasn't it a a lighter and a piece of plywood?"
"Yeah, it was something like that."
The conversation continued in the front seat between Zane and Matthew. The headroom in the back seat of the 1991 GMC Jimmy was low, and my head bounced against the headliner as we bounced along the logging roads above White Salmon.
Zach and I sat were in the back seat crouched on the bench. I hoped the safety was on the four shotguns leaning upwards on the seat between us like golf clubs without a caddy or a case. The ruts were getting bigger and i imagined one of the guns going off as we jerked around in the back seat, giving the Jimmy a new sunroof and me permanent damage in my left year.
Zach leaned back and grabbed a can of Rainier beer from behind the seat and handed it up to the front seat.
As we climbed the grade, the air outside continued to cool. The redwood trees began to smell stronger. The window got muddier. The Alan Jackson Cd kept skipping.
"No, you're right," Zane said. "It was a budweiser cap, a can of chew and your fishing license."
They were discussing the right combination of materials that when wedged in the gaping hole in the dashboard above the in-dash Cd player would reduce the rattle and prevent the skipping. The Cd Player was wired up with a length of stripped white extension cord running into the firewall at Zane's feet. The CD player flapped like a dog's tongue in summertime as it hung out of the dashboard, bouncing along the road in the woods.
We followed the road until the redwood trees were gone and the sky opened up above. For acres and acres up the mountain in all directions the forest had been clear cut. We followed the road around the slope like a line on a topography map until we could see across the Columbia river south to the snowy peak on Mt. Hood.
Matthew stopped the car. I grabbed the beer. Zach grabbed the guns. Zane opened the case of 100 12 gauge shells and set them beside the clay pigeons on the ground. The barren hillside opened up like a amphitheater, funneling down towards the river.
We were on SDS Lumber land, the local lumber company who had harvested the surrounding mountainside for plywood. The slope in all directions had been harvested and the yield would soon be lathed, pressed, and glued, then barged down stream to the Portland yards. It will end up covering the stick framed dwellings and sub flooring of the modern suburban world. That is if the builders were still willing to use real plywood and not cut cost and corners by using oriented strand board in it's place. (A point of contention in White Salmon. Plywood sales have diminished in favor of more available OSB. ) [read: Plywood vs. OSB]
If you drew a line on a map between Mt. Adams Washington and Mt. Hood Oregon, the line would be perpendicularly bisected by the Columbia River. And at that intersection, the Hood River Toll Bridge connects the 33rd and the 42nd states in the union to each other by way of a 75¢ fee. (each way). And somewhere in the woods, or where the woods used to be, the sun shown down on the ground and the guns fired up in the sky. The shotguns spit out the shells from their chambers like smoking rose petals, falling to the mud and rolling into the dead wood at our feet. The hundred year old tree trunks were broke and shattered, trimmed to the ground like a stainless steel razor drug across the chin of the columbia river watershed.
There i stood, with my ears ringing, discovering a new corner of the world, reminding me there are many ways to live and die. There are alleys in Alphabet City where i could swear daylight has never seen. There are acres of concrete in Culver City were i swear nothing has ever grown. And there are places somewhere near White salmon washington i swear no one has ever seen. And it was somewhere near the latter that i stood, someplace entirely new, yet somehow, like so many other times, found myself with my eyes wide open, my ears ringing, my lungs expanding, and standing in a place where the woods used to be.
