In the not-too-distant evolutionary past; Redwood, Wilson

This decade, closing to its end when writing this (2008), has seen the environmental questions become an increasingly important. So we feel like to offer a brief parallels between recent and little more distant history on environmental questions. Heres a text from almost 40 years past. Besides the importance of the topic discussed, it is written with beautiful language, and also contains very informative remarks on forests preservation. We feel this text underlines the importance of protecting the forests of the world from greed short-sighed cuttings leading to deforestation, results of, which are much of concern these days. Text was originally written on behalf of the Redwood forests of California, but the same environmental concern is nowadays actual as well. Same concern can be enlarged concerning lots of other forests of the world these days.

As an starting point, we also like to remind of one most the famous enviromental speechess, namely the words spoken by 19th century Chief Seattle ¹. As is (more or less) generally known, the (alleged) content of that speech, has later been quoted in many circumstances, perhaps most widely well-known if not most lately, at beginnings of the 1960s environmental movement. On todays perspectives, the one unfortunate aspect concerning the many later reappearings of the speech seems to be that actual verified document from the content of it (fx tape-recording, simply for the reason that sound recording at the time wasn´t invented) doesn´t exist. ²

To avoid such a misfortunate happenings, as well as to ensure the actual content of the text preserved, we now quote here the words of Alan C. Wilson, exact and unaltered, as written on the Canned Heat Future Blues(1970) album inner sleeve³:

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Grim Harvest

The redwoods of California are the tallest living things on earth, nearly the oldest, and among the most beautiful to boot. They dominated the woods of the northern hemisphere in the time of the dinosaurs, a time when no mammal, flower, or blade of grass had yet appeared on earth. The ice age nearly exterminated them – of the once vast redwood forest only a remnant was spared by the immense glaciers, which covered much of Europe, Asia and North America in the not-too-distant evolutionary past.

Walking through this forest is an experience unique on earth. Here the sun´s rays are intercepted three hundred feet and more above the ground and are broken into tiny shimmering beams which descend among towering pillars to play, at length, on the forest floor. Fern and wildflower bathe in the soft glow of a thousand muted spotlights which flicker on and off as the trees upper boughs sway majestically in a gentle wind.

2,000,000 acres of virgin redwood forest greeted the white man´s civilization as he completed his sweep of North America. In the last 100 years 1,800,000 acres of these have been logged, and of the remaining 200,000 only 75,000 are presently safe from devastation in state and national parks. At a time when these parks´ campsites must be reserved months in advance, the remaining 125,000 acres are being ”harvested” (as the lumbermen put it), for the uses which other trees could fulfill.

At the current rate of ”harvest” these remaining acres will be cleared within the next ten years.

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Notes:

1. Or "Chief Sealth", Seathle, Seathl or See-ahth as the other used, possibly more correct translations for the name are.

2. One who wishes to read further from the actual words spoken in that speech, question of whether the translator was plausibly bilingual, the question when the speech actually took place and where, not to forget some of the later rewritings, one can (for a start) see: Feest, Christian F.[ed.], Indians & Europe. An interdisciplinary collection of essays(1999). Univ. Of Nebraska Press. In need of shorter interpretations and perhaps more focused on later rewritings of the speech, see: Francis, Daniel, The Imaginary Indian. The image of indian in Canadian Culture, p. 140-141, (1992).

3. Our source, the LP-copy of Future Blues-album is of french origin (Liberty LBS 83364), so we of course are not in knownledge, if the text included exists in other editions of the record as well.