Exile and Pride

In 1979, Clare ran six miles home from Highway 101 along the Elk River. Every farm landmark he passed was familiar, as were the contours of the road itself and all of the people who drove their log trucks by. Two miles away from his house, Clare saw a sign marking the start of the Siskiyous National Forest. 

In 1994, Clare lived at the edge of corn country in southeast Michigan. He found a book titled Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry. Contained in the book were images of forests after clearcuts, new and old growth forests, and tree farms. He flipped to the section about Oregon and found the Siskiyous. As a child, Clare had cut firewood from the detritus left behind by clearcuts (the logs, branches, and stumps that were too small to be used by the industrial loggers); he and his father would spend all of October gathering enough firewood to last through winter. A caption in the book explained that a clearcut near Port Orford had caused a massive slide of mud, rock, and logging debris that washed downstream into the Elk River before ending up in the ocean. Clare recognized the names of the places but kept reading.