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Doug Fir Defends Doug Firs: the first Earth First! Aerial Blockade opens 1985.
Willamette National Forest. Arriving in the predawn darkness of May 20, 1985, a group of nine blockaders, accompanied by a photographer for the Portland Alliance, drive into the Pyramid Creek timber sale, cross the federally mandated closure boundary, and put a climber into a tree slated for cutting. The Plan: By nonviolently occupying the canopy of a tall tree slated for immediate destruction, the blockaders would prevent its killing as long as possible. Previous blockades in the area organized by the Corvallis-based Cathedral Forest Action Group had brought activists to hold sit-ins on logging roads, keeping logging trucks from entering or departing the national forest carrying the bodies of freshly killed trees to Willamette Industry mills. But the brevity of the tactic, protecting the forest from industry depredators for no more than an hour or two, coupled with fines and federal court sentences that barred the arrested/convicted activists from entering the national forests for a year, didn't seem cost effective. Blockading up in the tree canopies seemed a much better idea. Here's how Earth First!'s first tree sitting effort went: ...The van rockets across Pyramid Creek bridge, headlights yawing wildly (13 people aboard the van.) It was after 4 am, tension palpable in the close air of the van, fatigue blurring ourselves as Leo roared us up the road. Can't the Freddies see the lights? I feel a cold heard knot of tension in my gut. We're almost at the closure area. What if they chained the road shut? What if we round a turn on this dusty hardscrabble logger's road carved into the lush forests, and come upon a great army of freddies and Willies, spotlights flickering on, drawn guns waving....But the road was open, empty soft blush of false dawn teasing the eastern horizon. Onward past Pyramid Creek,...no Feds...past the restriction sign...no Freds, and suddenly we're at the spur trail drop off spot. We plunge to a halt: Jumpout time! The rear doors swing open into the not-yet-dawn darkness and we tumble out into the swirling dust of our sudden stop. Go! Go! A rush of relief. We've outfoxed the Freddies! We propel ourselves at the urging of someone too scared to whisper, "get going!" And our stupid stupid flashlights, visible for miles, no doubt, and Rusk and others can't seem to live without the damned electric things, I'm content to stumble along in my steel toed boots, and we amble sloooowly down the spur road, me frantic with worry, still assuming that Freds may come popping out of the woodwork but they don't show...don't show.... Finally, a quarter mile down the spur road, a pile of trees, cut into lengths and stripped of their branches comes into view. Looks like a giant lincoln log pile. A few clamber on to it, discover a trench-like slot between two logs, and we all pour in, gusty with a strange relief at getting this far without being popped. All are chuckling and carrying on slightly, and after a few minutes I get up and clamber back to the road peering up its dark length, wondering when that fateful moment might come, when Freddie shows up. After facing west with ears on high gain, I see, out of the corner of my eyes, a light colored glow up the spur trail, as if the indirect glow of somebody's headlights was reflecting onto some tree branches. "Car." I said in a low strangled voice, then as all were still chatting, shouted in a low voice "Car!" and "Lights" Fear a bile in my throat. Voices abruptly ceased, the team sank into silence and immobility in the trench. I was panicking somewhat, rolled over the top and into the cavity hoping that I wasn't going to stamp on anyone's hand or head with steeltoed boots. Somehow I didn't; after I slid in amongst the others, heart pounding. Silence claimed us for about 15 minutes. while I imagined stealthy rent-a-cops in soft soled shoes creeping along the spur road, ears trained for our alien presence. We waited. No one. The others slept, or lay curled around each other, getting comfort from proximity. At length, I craned my head up and saw that the "light" was almost certainly a light colored patch of soil, relaxed. No go. Finally the great magic happened: it grew light enough for us to see the trees distinctly. Got the others roused, and we walked/stumbled along the spur to the stumpland. Stumpland it was, dozens of acres denuded of its trees, and the fringe of the forest still there. Mike Jakubal, soon to be "Doug Fir", slowly, with a bit of difficulty, picked out his tree and we assembled around it. No sign of loggers or their trucks, only some sleepy birdcalls. Mike stared at his tree, started getting into his harness. Occasional low truck noise in the deeps of the forest--coming this way? Couldn't tell. Time kicked fitfully by, while my stomach tightened into a ball of worry. Doug Fir slowly wrapped himself in climbing gear, while I scanned all available horizons, my paranoia radar flickering from fatigue. Mike Roselle took an appropriate measure: he dozed, stretched out with his head pillowed comfortably on the slope of a stump. With his beard and long woolen overcoat, he looked like General Grant in repose on the battlefield after Gettysburg or some similar atrocity.. "Any last words,?" I asked him. "Oh sheeit!" he said with a laugh. Then.... Tink! Tink tink tink tink! Doug Fir pounded home the first nail, seven feet up the trunk of a fine aged douglas fir, sending an electric shock through everybody: Spiking for Wilderness! The nail sank in 3/4 of its length. Doug Fir placed the first loop of his climbing harness onto it; then stepped aboard his "Jacob's Ladder" The nail bent. Alarm! Would the nail hold? With a frown, Doug Fir studied the situation, then thunked the nail in deeper until he could only barely hang his ladder on board and found the nail held. Relief! Still, he switched to the spike-sized nails--8 1/2 inch long and as deadly looking as bayonets. Standing in his ladder, 8 feet off the ground, he sank the thick spike in: Tonk, tonk, tonk, tank, tink, tink, tink! This one held perfectly, not a trace of bending. He slung his ladder higher, boot strapping his way up in the growing light: 15 feet. 20 feet. 25 feet. Starting to get really up there, he had me belay him so he wouldn't come tumbling to the ground should a slip happen or a spike give way. Nightmare! Doug Fir's wooden-shafted hammer breaks! Luckily we've brought a spare. He gets it, continues pounding his way up. Still no sign of log trucks or Freddies. The rest of us milled about somwhat aimlessly or watched Doug Fir climb....A beautiful morn. Finally after 45 minutes, he was up! He slung his connectors to the the massive branch of this mighty tree and we cheered our new found hero! Then he pulled his gear, (two stout climber's bags, enough to hold a week or more of supplies) up and away, tugged his ropes up and this tree was safe! Wasn't a logger around that could cut this tree down, not even the Willies, with so many witnesses, including a courageous Alliance reporter. Then, a dull rumble behind us as a big white crummy bus brought the first loggers of the day. They were screened from us by the uncut strip of forest they'd come to decimate that morning. Our mood was buoyant, infectiously happy. Roselle bellowed a laugh, and the loggers knew we were there. They had no inkling yet that Doug Fir was up in a Doug Fir, however. We ringed the tree, just in case, and after twenty minutes they never came near. Doug Fir unrolled his banner: "Don't cut us down!" and a crummy that had been going down hill through clearcut desolation a quarter mile below us skidded to a halt. Out of the cloud of dust that enveloped the bus, a volley of amazed and dumbfounded curses rang out. the crummy turned around and raced back uphill. We waited. Ten minutes later, a pair of nervous loggers in pie-pan aluminim helmets walked uncertainly over to us. We were chuckling and cracked a joke at them, and they swiftly relaxed, breaking into grins as they peered up at Doug Fir. Then as we bantered with them, time flew. Different Willies came by, loggers and managerial types, to either gawk or snap photographs. Nonviolence preparation, courtesy of Mike Roselle of Earth First! enabled the blockaders to make their first contact with the tree fellers calm, relaxed, jovial. What began with the shouted curse from a distant incoming logger who'd just espied Mike's Earth First! banners became a joking talk with several of them on climbing techniques. All sides refrained from threats or cutting remarks. The arrival of US Forest Service law enforcement officers Slagowski, Christiansen and Jones several hours later changed the dynamic. . All 8 blockaders on the ground were issued federal citations for violating 36 CFR 261.53E "Being in a closed area". Mike Jakubal, high in the tree, disclosed "Doug Fir" as his name and was not cited at this time: none of the forest service officials would climb the tree to give him a citation! Next came Linn County deputy sheriffs Dave Freeman and Dale Thurman. Freeman asked the blockaders to disperse. All but two, Marcy Willow and another, refused. The deputies then arrested us on charges of 2nd degree criminal trespass. Blockader Mike Roselle declined to walk to the deputy sheriffs' vehicle and was carried, Pasha-like, to it by the officers. The six arrested blockaders were driven out of the forest to Highway 20, ticketed and released. Willamette Industries officials then directed the loggers to cut the stand of trees around the occupied tree. Doug Fir spent the day and early evening in the tree watching trees fall around him. In the early evening, Jakubal quietly lowered himself to the ground to inspect the freshly killed stumpland around his tree. He remained on the ground more than an hour, and was busted around 7:30 pm by forest service law enforcement agent Slagowsky, who got between Mike and the tree. which tree was then speedily cut down first thing next morning smashing Jakubals camera and other gear. After being held several hours, Jakubal was released in Sweet Home Oregon. When he reappeared at the EF! Sanctuary Camp around midnight that night, there were cries of disbelief "Go back up, Mike!" and dismay that he'd been dry-gulched by Slagowski. The following morning, despite assurances from the Forest Service, the tree, along with Jakubal's platform full of supplies and equipment, was cut down. Despite the Wright Brothers-like brevity of Mike's first-ever Earth First tree-sit, the tactic of tree climbing to hold sit-ins in the canopies was validated. (So long as one never leaves one's tree human-free; always have a replacement come up the tree before you come down.) May 28, 1985.
(1) Probation is only exclusion zone, not sanctuary or entire Willamette national Forest.
I've got a week before the first arraignment in Albany so can do lots now in Portland and in the Forest. Time will tell... |