Educational opinons.

Friday, November 10^th, 2011

      The small city just popped up out of nowhere. I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it first hand, but then again they say believing is seeing. I've seen lots of things in my day, But today I've been completely astounded by the tree processing plant in Longview, WA. This place is absolutely huge, and it certainly looks all of a small city in scale. It stretches about 2 miles long, factories and mills on the one side, a Walmart and Home Depot on the other side. I found it a somewhat incongruous juxtaposition; it was as if heavy industry decided that they liked white picket fences and easy shopping then moved in.

       Today I woke up in the hotel, not quite refreshed form the late night of getting from Spokane to Auburn, WA. I like this place. It has a quirky kind of ambiance. In the lobby, one can find glass-topped coffee tables sporting old newspapers from the Seattle world fair under the glass. The table I sat at had a picture of four old trucks from the 1960's (space age!) hauling this behemoth of a tree. The trunk was cut up into 4 sections and placed on 4 different trucks. (duh)  At a glance I would have guessed that the carcass was someplace in the neighborhood of 13 feet in diameter. The caption read somewhat as follows, “This douglas fir behemoth is the largest tree to come out of the North Bend area in some time. It is being brought to the lumber mill for processing where it is estimated to yield 35,000 board feet. The rest of the tree was left in the forest as unmerchantable.” Being here now at a modern day processing plant, one will not see such behemoths, thankfully. Still, it makes me weep a little inside for the unnecessary slaughter of thousands of trees, however large or small.

      These are the same trees that provide oxygen for the entire planet, store carbon dioxide, but also provide paper for our packaging and reading pleasure. Nevermind the part about using the rest room. Seeing as I'm riding with another driver down to Clackamas to get a different truck, I thought I'd share with him that you can get 4 times as much fiber from an acre of hemp as from an acre of trees. That doesn't change the fact that hemp farming is still illegal in the U.S., but a fact is a fact. Anyway, here we are delivering paper to be recycled, which helps a bit at least.

      Paper is one of the things truck companies haul year round. We consume it in many forms that we often take for granted these days. We've got paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, tissue paper, card stock, packaging for cereal boxes, egg cartons, any and all cardboard, those goofy little cups, newspaper, books and so forth. Then there are all the chemical byproducts of making paper, one of which is distilled white vinegar. I'm sure there are others but I'm not going to google that just yet. It boggles my mind really.

     Sitting here, waiting to be unloaded, I am watching this massive bulldozer shove around a pile of shredded tree bits. I can see the steam rising off the pile from the latent decomposition. As the pile grows flatter, I wonder why he's doing this. It isn't like he's pushing it into a vessel for transport. Part of me secretly wonders if he's just been given the keys to the bulldozer and been told to look busy, so they make these huge piles then demolish them. Why make the huge piles in the first place if you're just going to flatten them out? Maybe the decomposing helps break down the lignins in the wood, but I know that is the tertiary stage of microbial composting. Has it gone that far already?

There are so many things about industrial processes that leave me curious and fascinated. I swear that I was born into an isolated tribe in my last life or something.There is a certain sense of appreciation that comes from feeling like you've never really seen something before.  I see people everyday doing the most incredible things, which are routine to them, but amazingly new and complex to me.  Simple wonder in everyday life, especially this modern age, is essential.