Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
desktop pictures
a request from delire to use a photo from my blog inspired me to re-vamp the photograph in photoshop for use on holiday cards this year.
in that process i decided to turn that photo into another in the forest desktops series. for those of you who haven’t been reading my blog for all that long (and who like purty desktop pictures of trees) – i am reposting all four from the series here for your use. if you do end up using them – tell me! i like to hear about stuff like that.
new Forest Sentry – Photo taken in the Gifford Pinchot Forest on a research plot – Predominantly Fir & Hemlock, August 2004 Cedar & Creek -Photo taken in Cliff Gilker Park, Roberts Creek BC, October 2004 Turning Alder – Photo taken in the Loomis National Forest, Washington State, September 2004 Douglas Fir – Photo taken at Lynn Headwaters in North Vancouver BC, September 2003 – this one looks way better on an apple…. the colors are too dark on the windows box….
4 Comments on “desktop pictures”
Red Cedar 
Wow, those are terrific. The DougFir one very nearly brings tears to my eyes. It will definitely be appearing on my Mac desktop soon. I can’t help but think that, if every American could stand for just 15 minutes, alone or with one other person that they love, in a place such as this, so many of our troubles would be over. Old-growth logging would stop. Environmental destruction would be such anathema to so many people, because they would “get it.” *sigh*
Thanks.
thanks for the comment brad…
my interest in ecopsychology is for exactly these reasons – there is a part of me that honestly believes that if more people could spend time in these places there would be a different perspective at least on our planet and our place in it (there is something so remarkably humbling about standing on a thin ridge between two peaks looking down at the magnitude of the fall below)….
however – there is another part of me, that which has worked with the general public in natural settings and around natural resource issues that knows that unless people are open in the first place, they still won’t “get it”.
3 years ago i worked as an interpretive guide at the adams river sockeye run just outside of salmon arm bc. a miscalculation in the return lead to there being a far greater number of fish returning than had previously been thought – somewhere around 6 million brilliant red sockeye salmon (the largest run since 1938). that brought tears to my eyes every day i worked there (thousands of people come to see this run every four years), i had never been witness to anything that beautiful and powerful in the animal world.
however – many people came and said things like “these fish stink” (they rot on the banks after they spawn), and “what a waste” (meaning that they should have been caught by commercial trawlers at the mouth of the river rather than being allowed one natural spawning cycle). what we were witnessing was a miracle in that it could continue to exist in the midst of an industrial onslaught, and there were very many people who still couldn’t see it for what it was…. without their societal filters clouding their vision…..
I suppose you are right. Some people are so separated from the world by the layers of “civilization” surounding them like so much plastic wrap that their ability to see is compromised. Life for them has no value beyond a direct, quantifiable benefit to them.
Some years ago when I lived in Idaho, I was biking on an old road that eventually petered out into a trail as the high desert gave way to the forested foothills. I had been on this trail before; it was hot, but I knew that once the road ended and the trail began, I would be in the shelter of the pines and in the presence of a small creek. Although the creek water at such low elevation wasn’t safe to drink, I knew it would cool my toes and allow me to soak my headband and offer a nice audio backdrop for a rest stop. I often saw tracks of deer, rabbits, raccoons and some other critters I couldn’t identify, along the banks.
Imagine my dismay when I rounded a bend and found that the area – public land – had been taken over by cattle. The beasts had stomped the creek into a stinking mudhole and turned the narrow trail into a wide, dusty swath. They meandered in and out of the trees and across the trail, and as I tried to make my way through, they would run up ahead of me, kicking up clouds of choking dust and bits of manure/mud.
Equally distressing was the reaction I got when telling some folks about the incident later. “What’s the big deal? A few cows in the road.” “Nothing to see up there anyway.” “What were you doing up there anyway? You should drive up to X place where there aren’t any cows.”
The idea that a place had been destroyed, or at least severely damaged, by human beef factories, didn’t seem to bother too many people.
sigh…..
i still think that the idea that experiencing wild space is healthy and changes the ideas people have about the world has merit…. there are definitely people changed by these experiences
probably best just to focus on that….