The world is so dark, that gray is the brightest color the sky achieves in a day, and the sun is hardly visible above the hills to the south when it is at its shallow apex. The air hangs heavy with rain, clouds of it driven into sheets and waves. The wind occasionally building, then sustaining, then relenting for a bit before returning and gripping the trees mercilessly again, twisting their limbs, testing the strength of their roots. The sound ever more comforting, in spite of the evidence all around that not every branch or even tree itself will withstand the next gust.
The road of crushed rock unwinds along ridges as it traces the contour of the land. Steep in places as a railroad grade could not be, but always wide enough to accommodate a 30 ton log truck in about any weather. From time to time a blocked culvert or unstable hillside will subvert the engineer, and tumble the stones of the road back into the mix of earth and roots and limbs. The logging inflicts horrendous damage upon this place, scarring the land and disabling nature itself, setting it back a century or more in a matter of days. The delicate forests destroyed by these activities will not return in the lifetime of our children, and the stands our grandparents might have found will likely never be seen again.
Here and there the evidence of the past lingers. A partially crushed can or package of something, a long extinguished fire, or the sawed off remains of a once tall tree. There a pile of twine abandoned by a brush picker, who climbed up onto these hills to make a discreet living. The language foreign to them, documentation out of reach, and many eager to exploit their willing labor. My dogs readily discover the depressions where they crouched, carefully collecting Salal for the world's flower arrangements. The canines have no trouble detecting the remnants of their presence, whereas they have grown invisible to the human eye.
On a cedar stump resisting decay in the rain, a deep notch remains in the flared base, where the feller gained necessary advantage to succeed and survive the spectacular collapse of the giant. Sometimes if I close my eyes I can see the massive trees still standing above me, their thick green branches swaying in the breeze. What a land this must have been then, still dangerous and uncertain, still a threat to our destiny. No more. Now it is devastated and subdued, raped and savaged by man's corrupt desire. Waste, garbage, and debris litter every turnout and dead end. The rains build into floods that scour the land. The towers loom above and the pipelines snake below. There is hardly a thing left wild here, that does not feel the heel of mankind on its throat.
Lying on my back in a grove of old trees, the rain pelts my face. I gaze up into the branches. Moss and lichen adorn the stout limbs of maple, ferns perched confidently along their length. Nature resists her destruction here in these deep ravines. Mammoth leaning snags arch into the air above, threatening to collapse in an instant as they have for a century. Openings in them offer respite to owls and grouse. Their beating wings serve to unnerve me as I struggle through the thorny stems of devil's club and gooseberry. The satisfying sting of the spine entering the skin of my hand reminds me that I exist; I suffer therefore I am. At times I find myself pressing on with feet sinking ever more deeply into the mire of the swamp, seeking enlightenment at some hollow grotto hidden amidst these remaining ancient remnants of the divine. The world is now thick with the ghosts of its past. This tale has no happy ending, not at least until it has been consumed again by the heavy, wet darkness of time.