It seems that much of humanity has very little interest in any recovery or concern for future generations.
by Don Malcolm
To many people on planet Earth, it must be apparent that we are hell-bent on using up or consumingeverything that supports our accidental life and well-being on this insentient ball of accumulated happenstance that we call Mother Earth.
Looking back over my three-quarters of a century, I have witnessed some dramatic changes in life-styles, in my own person, and in humanity at large.
Each time I return to the sod of my birthplace, in the Madawaska River Valley of Ontario, I am reminded of the great stands of spruce, pine, cedar, poplar, maple, oak, ash, beech, and other hardwoods, that covered the hills and valleys of that river system, and I remember again the evening-time tales of the colourful loggers who returned each winter to cut down the trees, followed closely by the proud competitive teamsters with their prime horses, to skid the logs to the river’s edge. Do I remember tales of evening boxing matches?
And in that recollection, I turn again to the often-told tales of the spring-time river drives when the softwood logs were floated down the river to Ottawa and Quebec.
River drives presented hard and dangerous work. Often, logs got stuck on rocks in the river, resulting in logs piling up and creating a log-jam. Men went out in rowboats with pike-poles and peaveys to poke and pry the logs loose and send them on their way down the river. Young men, some still in their teens, eager to prove their worth, lost their lives in the tumbling rush when the jam broke, and young boys waited patiently for their turn in future river-drives.
The stories and songs of that time have left a chronicle of the glory and heartbreak. We all knew the songs.
In the monetary measurement, we thought there were many things we wanted, but looking back, it is easy to see that we had enough. Women in our community made home-made clothing from cast-offs from towns and villages outside of our area. We harvested wild strawberries, blueberries and raspberries and preserved them for winter. Home-baked bread was a luxury we now seem to have lost. In a large wooden box with a hinged lid, behind our house in winter, we stored venison, pork, and sometimes trout, when the ice was safe enough to allow fishing through a hole in the ice. From the many streams in what we considered our home turf, trout were quite plentiful.
Electricity had not yet reached our community. Wood- fired stoves cooked our food and warmed our houses. Coal-oil lamps lit our homes. Radio was just beginning to quicken our imagination. World War II was threatening.
In summertime, after the hay was cut and in the loft above the stables, we hitched the horses to the wagon, loaded up with enough food to feed the family, and hay for the horses, and began our annual trek to the Snake Rapids on the Madawaska River, where we would stay for a week or more enjoying the magic of the river. We slept outside until wolves howling far away in the upland on the north side of the river frightened us into the old cabin that had stood there for many years. In the daytime, we fished the river for bass and pike, and bathed in the shallows, watched closely by our parents.
Logging has changed considerably in the Madawaska Valley. No longer do men pull back and forth in unison on a two-man cross-cut saw to fall trees and cut them into desired log lengths. Modern light-weight chain-saws, operated by one man, can fall a tree in a very few minutes. Powerful skidders haul the felled trees to landings, where they are cut to the desired length, hoisted onto double-length trailers, and trucked to sawmills where they are sawn into lumber, and trucked to seaports to be sold away to countries whose forests have long since been depleted. Little regard is paid to a re-growth period to allow our own forests to recover.
But it seems that much of humanity has very little interest in any recovery or concern for future generations.
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[From WS January/February 2011]