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OtherRealms Issue 28 Part 02
Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 2 of 18
Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original
form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.
No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.
Editor's Notebook [Part 2 of 5]
What I did on my summer vacation
Unlike the last few years, Laurie and I decided to skip Worldcon in the
Hague and do something mundane for vacation. I'm somewhat burned out on
conventions in general, and neither Holland nor the Nasfic in San Diego
interested me very much (everything I've heard about Nasfic scares me --
the reports, even from folks working on parts of it, seem to be ranging
from either "total disaster" to "no worse than Nolacon" -- not that I
consider that a great recommendation) and we both have been hoping to
get back up to God's Country, also known as Washington state. My
parents own a cabin up in the Port Ludlow area on the Olympic Peninsula,
which is very green, quiet and about as far away from computers as you
can get.
Fifteen days and 2700 miles later, we're back, rested, recharged and
back in the grind. Also, I think, even more convinced that we want out
of the Bay Area in a few years before things go too crazy. We'd leave
now, but our jobs at Apple are wonderful (and for all the negatives
Apple has, it's still a paradise compared to almost every other company
I see) and it's hard to uproot two careers, especially high-tech ones,
and move them to a more rural locale. if the right offer came along, I
think we'd be convinced to leave Apple, but it's hard to see that
happening out of the blue, and we're not ready to look, not for a few
years at least. Apple's a real kick.
Our first stop was Portland and the home of Westercon 43. This was the
first Westercon we'd been to since the infamous Westercon XXXX in
Oakland (also known as The Con That Would Not Die).
The trip to Portland took two days and a thousand miles -- we obviously
took the scenic route. Starting very early, we cruised up 101 through
the redwoods to Eureka and then cut inland to highway 5 (also known as
"straight, wide and fast"), then up to Yreka. Travelling past Shasta
Lake underscores the severity of our current water shortage -- the
lake's surface is at least 100 feet below where it should be, a shrunken
blue dot in a bright red wasteland of shoreline. It's scary to think of
just how much water we need to get back to normal after four years of
dry. Driving through lots and lots of wooded hills was awe inspiring --
hard to describe (trees look like trees, big trees are wonderful, but
still trees). We neglected to stop at any of the 900 redwood burl
souvenir shops we saw, so I didn't get a redwood burl coffee mug for
work. I'm so disappointed. But it's really pretty and well worth just
tottering along the side roads for a while -- perhaps the subtitle of
this vacation should be "The Journey is the Reward", because getting
there was at least as much fun as the destination. That's one reason I
love driving vacations where you don't hurry to Be There -- because
there's a lot to see in places if you just get off the major interstates
and open your eyes.
Yreka's pretty typical of a Highway 5 town -- a collection of gas
stations, restaurants catering to people in cars heading from down there
to up there without really caring about where here is and a few motels
for the tired or patient. We stayed at the Motel 6, our normal wayside
stomping ground -- you can make fun of them but as Tom Bodet says, when
your eyes are closed, all hotels look the same, and Motel 6 is clean,
quiet and cheap consistently. The McDonalds of motels, perhaps --
nothing fancy, but you know what you're going to get before you arrive.
Day 1 was the longest drive of the trip, about 550 miles, and next time
I think I'd either stay on 101 to Medford or cut inland and call it at
Redding (about 100 miles shorter).
On the other hand, if I'd stopped at Redding, I might not have taken the
side trip to Crater Lake. Day 2 was about 400 miles with a nice jaunt
up to Crater Lake. Formed by the collapse of a volcano in Mount Mazama,
it's the second deepest freshwater lake in the world at 1400+ feet.
It's an interesting body, since there is neither an inlet nor an outlet --
the water in the lake is formed by runoff from the snow, and the only
losses are evaporation. Recent explorations have found hydrothermal
activity on the lake floor, which is what's left of the caldera of the
volcano -- a nice reminder that the term 'extinct volcano' is a
misnomer. Sleeping, perhaps, but definitely not extinct. They thought
Mt. St. Helens was asleep for a while, too.
After Crater Lake, we toodled on up to Portland for Westercon. I refer
to Oregon and Washington as God's Country only slightly in jest. It's
absolutely gorgeous. I find, trying to describe the trees and the blue
sky and the mountains and the rivers and the entire environment is
beyond proper descriptions -- all I can think of are words like
"awesome" or "gorgeous" or other essentially content-free superlatives.
You'll have to trust me when I say that places like Crater Lake are
national treasures and have to be visited to be appreciated.
You can't visit Oregon or Washington without getting involved in the
Northern Spotted Owl meets the Logging Monster controversy. Earth
First!'s Redwood Summer of discontent and protest seems to have fizzled,
with hundreds instead of thousands on the lines and not a lot of either
press time or effect.
You drive down roads next to cars with signs in their windows that read
"this family supported by timber dollars" -- there are entire towns that
will simply cease to exist if the timber dollars go away. A very large
chunk of Oregon's economy is tied up in lumber, and if that goes away,
the state itself is going to be hurting. The economic costs are
potentially huge.
On the other hand, it's far to simplistic to simply write it off as an
owl vs. jobs scenario. The reason the Northern Spotted Owl is
important, beyond the belief that ALL life is important, is that the owl
is what is known as an indicator species. The overall well-being of an
indicator species tells you what's happening to the ecosystem and all
the other animals in it as well. As the owl goes, so goes a number of
other animals and the health of the entire area.
The owl is important in a number of ways -- I think it's the first time
when people are having to sit down and make some tough choices. Until
now, most endangered species situations either had no real impact
(California condor) or impacted humanity in ways most people could
ignore (pupfish holding up a dam here, red squirrels holding up a
telescope over there). It's like the rain forest -- it's a damn shame,
but since it's happening away from the nightly news, we can all feel
sorry, but not really worry about it. Shortsighted, but very human.
That's not possible with the owl. Saving the owl -- or even the act of
trying to save the owl -- is going to affect lots of people where they
can't ignore it. In the pocketbook. So the owl is going to be, I
think, the situation where we decide what "save the environment" really
means. The old attitude of "at whatever cost" won't last (it never,
frankly, has -- instead of fighting over the level of support for an
endangered species, all the fighting went into whether or not to save
it). Instead, some kind of compromise is necessary -- and it might be
we won't succeed at that.
Which isn't to say there aren't people to blame. Many years of stupid
land management by the federal government, with a policy of consumption
instead of conservation, lumber companies that argue that clear-cutting
old-growth forest is efficient and therefore necessary are the major
villains here.
The lumber companies like to tell the public things like "we plant many
more trees than we cut" -- which is true, but begs a number of facts.
One fact is that many of the trees die, of course. More important is
that they're taking established, multi-species forests and complex
ecosystems and razing them -- clearcutting them, destroying all
vegetations and driving off all the animals. Then they replace this by
planting fast-growing, single-species forests with no ecological
complexity or diversity.
We are, in the name of economics, replacing ancient redwood forests with
pine and fir stands that are about as much a real forest as a Christmas
tree farm. And the forestry firms pat themselves on the back for their
ecological awareness. National Forests are part of the Department of
Agriculture, not Interior (a fact brought to light by the many signs we
passed while driving all over the state). We're not here to protect our
environment, but to maximize the profitability and replacing all those
trees with even more trees -- ones that'll grow faster, straighter and
be able to be harvested even sooner. Good ecology, that.
The reality is that timber is harvested and managed in a very unsound
way, ecologically. Timber is a renewable resource (unlike many of the
resources we're wasting, like petroleum) but the ecosystem that houses
that timber isn't an unquestionably renewable system. What's going to
have to happen is that the timber industry is going to have to come to
grips with the reality that uncontrolled clearcutting is not going to be
acceptable, especially in old-growth forests. Locking them away forever
isn't the answer, either. Somewhere in the middle is a managed forest,
where the larger, older trees are harvested and the younger trees
allowed to mature in their stead, where complexity is kept and the
ecosystem protected. We just can't keep chopping down all the trees,
ripping out the stumps and planting Christmas trees in their place.
There's going to be pain. Perhaps a lot of pain. I believe the lumber
firms will be forced into the new reality kicking and screaming, and
both the forests and the people dependent on the forests will suffer.
If everyone worked together, the suffering could be minimized, but
that's not how things happen these days. Better to toss a few pet
lawyers at the problem until it's too late to do anything.
Sigh.
Anyway, enough on owls. On to better, more positive things, like
Portland and Westercon. We arrived on the fourth of July and checked
into the Delta Inn (we normally stay at an outlying hotel at
conventions. They tend to be cheaper and quieter than the major hotels --
even the non-party hotel that Westercon had. Since Laurie and I both
believe in trying to get a good night's sleep instead of partying for
days on end, being able to get away from the convention is a good
trade-off to being five minutes away). Since the traffic around Fort
Vancouver and the Red Lion hotels was supposed to be a zoo because of
the festival and fireworks, we (after getting major lost on the way to
the hotel -- the 'map' supplied by Westercon was seriously misleading)
checked in, unpacked and settled in for the evening. Having driven
about 900 miles in 48 hours made a hot bath and an evening of nothing
sound quite attractive, so we grabbed some quick food at a nearby
generic, mediocre Chinese restaurant and watched everyone set off their
fireworks in Delta Park before crashing.
[continued]
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