In my walks about the area of Eugene between the OU campus and downtown - generally several blocks west and north of the west end, where the OU bookstore is, I found many things of note...one such is depicted here...a "legacy" tree...with a plaque revealing the concept and date of dedicated...as a committed bender of birches when I was a child, I wanted to "shinny" up that trunk...would I have become a "topper" of trees this tall if I'd been born 100 years before I was?
The straightness of the trunk brings me to the thought of wondering what the first European sailor would have thought. Wooden ships needed straight trunks for masts...THOSE days are all but gone, except for sea life museums, drawings, and old photographs...
During my first trip through western central Oregon in 2001, I saw shaved clean by machine trunks like the one above stacked 4 stories high in a Weyerhauser lot near Roseburg, Oregon...I still wonder what percentage of them get exported to the Asian Pacific rim.
I am glad the citizens of Eugene, Lane County, and the state of Oregon have the foresight to create a legacy tree program...somehow tree farms are not the same as what we find growing in the WILD.
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