The Kraemenator

The Golden Spruce was unique. It was a cultural icon to an entire race of people, it was a tourist attraction and source of revenue for various tour companies, and the locals in neighboring villages, and it was a reminder to all how beauty and life can exist against all the odds. It was certainly something majestic, but some might argue that it was the exact same as all the other trees, except it’s leaves were yellow instead of green.

So what made it special? I’m sure that there are a great many rocks that stick out from their surroundings, and none of them have become a major legend. Well, the Haida believed that everything, even inanimate was represented by a spiritual form, however, one animal or story would usually represent multiple objects, of similar descriptions. For example, the origin of the stars was all part of one story. There wasn’t an individual story for each star. Haida legend dictates that the Golden Spruce, or Kiidk’yaas (it was the only tree to have an official name) was formed when one boy (despite his grandfather’s warnings) looked back upon his forsaken village and stayed rooted on the spot, unable to move. For one specific landmark to have it’s very own creation story, that it shared with no one else, is, in itself, quite a remarkable feat. It would be the modern equivalent of a homeless person getting a story about just him on the news, even though there are hundreds of people like him out on the streets. This just goes to show how vital to Haida culture the Golden Spruce was.

From a biological perspective, the golden spruce was unique in the sense that there were simply no other trees with a genetic makeup that let their needles become “gold”, while still being able to survive. Nowhere else in the world has a coniferous tree, spruce or otherwise, had it’s needles change colour in such a way that the Golden Spruce’s did, thus making Hadwin’s act on the night of January 22nd, 1997 the end of a unique species. Even to the average Even to “modern” person, the Golden Spruce was, and still is a sight to behold.

It was much more than just a tree with funny colored needles.

What is a tree?

Ask a logger, and he’ll tell you it’s food on the table. Ask a company, and it’ll tell you that it means happy shareholders. Ask a member of green peace, and they’ll tell you it’s something that needs to be protected at all costs. Ask a politician, and he’ll tell you whatever his voters think. Ask a Coast Salish native, and he’ll tell you it’s an integral part of his culture. Ask me, and I’ll tell you I don’t really know.

B.C. has been blessed with the fact that empires, with their need for land, weapons and wood didn’t really begin to arrive until a few hundred years ago. Therefore, BC is one of the few places left on earth where you can find huge forests in vast quantities. Even in Eastern Canada, there is significantly less forest than over here on the west coast.

So now humanity (or rather, B.C.’s government) is faced with the decision of what to do with this natural resource. Do we chop it all down? (probably a bad idea) Do we leave it alone and make the mere thought of chopping down a tree a crime? (also, probably a bad idea) Personally, I think that there’s no simple answer to this question. Logging creates hundreds of jobs, and it’s one of B.C.’s primary ways of making money. However, we can’t just go off chopping down whatever we like. As you have no doubt heard before, trees are rather important to the environment, which, in turn, is rather important to us.

So I pose the question to which there is no easy answer, “what should we do with this gift of trees that we have been given?” I think that the answer is in finding the right (and precarious) balance between prosperity, and responsibility. No answer will please everyone, but, we’ll have to do the best we can.

-Nicholas K.

Green.

It’s everywhere. Above me, below me and to all sides, like some sort of monster trying to swallow me whole. It’s in the trees, the ferns, the moss, the bushes and the plants. Seriously, when it comes to colour choices, the forest sure is lazy. I remember asking sarcastically around the table one night about why every single thing in the forest seemed to be only one colour. My son, ever the scholar and proud to show off his knowledge, took the liberty to tell me that green things were green because of photosythi-something. Not that it mattered. The whole place would be reduced to brown by the time I was done with it. I thought about this as I started up my chainsaw, the mechanical noise drowned out all those pesky birds… never figured out why people got all emotional over their singing. It’s just noise, and personally I prefer the noise of my chainsaw. It means a tree is about to be taken down by unstoppable me! God I love my job.

As I begin the last few moments of this tree’s life, I get that little high I always get when I’m about to earn my pay. There’s nothing quite like driving your saw into a tree. That sense of power that you feel, felling giant trees is one of the best sensations I’ve ever felt.

“TIMBER” I yell, but mostly for my own amusement, the others know exactly what’s happening, whether or not I yell out. The behemoth comes crashing down, and I’m pleased to see that it’s the biggest tree I’ve brought down all month. Maybe I’ll buy the first round of drinks tonight to celebrate my accomplishment.

“What do ya say? So you think we take this tree to the truck and then head back?” my buddy Mike asks me.

“Sounds good.” I say. “Now help me get these branches off this tree.”

We make short work of the tree and get it on the truck in almost record time. I’m ready to crack open a bottle and celebrate the end of the week.

“Come on man,” Mike shouts over the truck engine. “Hop in”.

“Tell ya what,” I shout back, “you take that old clunker down the hill, and I’ll race you there. I beat you to the T-junction, you owe me a beer.”

“You’re on!” he says, laughs and takes off.

I start sprinting straight down the hill, cutting off all of the switchbacks that Mike has to go down. The trees rush past me, threating to tear me apart should I collide with one of them, but that won’t happen, I own this forest, nothing can stop me. I see the junction up ahead, where the main logging road splits into this one and another. I slow my pace as I get to the junction. Mike’s just rounding the corner now, approaching the last 20 meters or so until he reaches me.

“What took you so long?” I ask Mike as I hop in the cab of the truck.

“Would you believe a huge mud patch I got bogged down in?”

“Nope” I reply. “And you owe me a beer.”

Well, like everyone else, I too shall now have a blog post about one of the chapters in the Golden Spruce. Mr. Jackson said the other day that “tangents are encouraged” so I’m going to take those words and run with them. Apologies if this post seems a bit random.

Pop quiz. How many of you have read a newspaper before? I know I have. You ever think about what it took to make said newspaper appear on your doorstep in the morning? If you’re a TALON, you probably have to some degree, seeing as we had a brief discussion in class today about it, and the fact that there is a poster on the wall saying how many thousands (yes, thousands) of trees it takes to print the news papers that American’s read every Sunday.

So, without going into much detail, we realize that lots of trees are needed for newspapers, but trees do not magically transform themselves into newspapers. Once a tree has been cut (presumably with a chainsaw) it has to be hauled out of the woods on top of a truck to either a lumber mill, and then to a pulp mill, or straight to the pulp mill, where it is transformed into paper. This paper is then sent to a printing press where the news is printed upon. From the press, the newspaper is driven by truck , after making a few stops, to your house or the newsstand.

So, without going into that much more detail, a newspaper requires (at least) the following to go from tree to your doorstep: a chainsaw, a truck, a pulp mill, another truck, a high capacity printing press, another truck, and probably a warehouse and a few more trucks. Each of these things require their own materials to create, so your environmental impact for reading the paper is really much greater than just using part of a tree.

Aside from the environmental impact issue that this post has brought up, writing it also made me think about how vulnerable our society can be. Say for instance, somehow, all the trucks in the world disappeared, nothing else went missing, just the trucks. Society would stop in it’s tracks. Almost everything in the western world at some point or has been moved by a truck, so all of the raw materials/semi refined materials or even finished products wouldn’t be able to get to where they needed to be. The obvious solution to said problem would to be to simply build more trucks, something which would be nearly be impossible, as the materials needed to make a truck wouldn’t be able to get to the factory. Basically, if that happened, we’d all be hooped. Food wouldn’t get to the supermarkets, medicine wouldn’t be able to be manufactured, and electricity would soon cease to exist.

Just some thoughts inspired by page 22 of The Golden Spruce.

-Nicholas K.

Time. It is nothing. It is everything. It comes, and it goes.

I have seen much in the passage of time. Lives, families, settlements, civilizations, they have come, and they have gone. I stand here, observing,  not judging, only watching.

The landscape, my home, is filled with the young trees in their quest for the sky, with the small animals hurriedly going about their busy lives and the village of the people off on the horizon. I like it here. It is my home

Sometimes, the people come and visit me, sometimes alone sometimes with others. They come and sit ‘neath my branches watching the world pass by. When they ask for my wisdom, I do not speak, the only sound, the wind through my branches. I keep my silence not out of a greed for knowledge, but out of a wish for them to learn the lessons alone, for that is what will make them wise.

Still, I wonder if my silence has truly made them wise, for today they come to visit me not with questions, but with axes. I do not fear death. I have seen people, animals and birds be born, and die. It is the way of things.