this was somebody’s idea of paradise.  a history loaded  heavy  with douglas fir,  suspenders,  and 
trucker hats.  the townsfolk reminisce  about  industry.  about the one log load.  old growth giants 
hauled from a washboard to the lumber mills.  these days, most are husks of broken windows and 
spray paint.  the woods are crowded  and  dry  as  matchsticks.  and the trucks haven’t come by in 
decades. you can taste devastation at the back of your throat on the banks of the siuslaw.  spruced 
siletz shore winds carry the fragrance of lost livelihood sorrow.  here’s another ghost town whose 
ghosts never moved into that beacon of  light.  their possum eyes say  please remember.  there are 
osprey egg curses teetering on the edge of  the  nest.  like  a subterranean buzzworm den that’s on 
the brink of caving in.  or  a  spotted owl  burrowed  underneath approaching cork boots and steel 
caterpillar treads.  all along the interstate corridor it’s the same. once proud woodsmen tell stories 
of mule trains and felling timber.  calloused millers speak of pulling green chain and putting their 
popeye arms to work. but how, soon enough,  pink slips replaced pay stubs.  cupboards got dusty. 
houses turned into wildfire fuel.  a sea of ruddy and tough faces grew hollow and sunken.  census 
designated places full of people who were dealt a bad hand.  unincorporated communities waiting 
on that gnarled,  twisted  tree of fate to swing back  and take everyone’s heads off.  a colossal tree 
that will echo through the forest like a calving glacier,  even if no one else is around to hear it fall.