Last week I went hiking with two friends out along Fish Creek in the Mt. Hood National Forest. I went to go take pictures of the areas that are going to be clearcut for the Palomar Pipeline LNG project. The super-short version of this is: they want to build more fossil fuel infrastructure in Oregon, including hundreds of miles of clearcutting to run pipelines of Liquefied Natural Gas. Well, technically the pipelines are for normal natural gas, but the idea is that it is shipped from overseas in its supercooled state. There are a lot of things wrong with this.
- Building new fossil fuel infrastructure is ridiculous and generally backwards-thinking.
- LNG tankers are ungodly explosive.
- Clearcutting hundreds of miles through sensitive areas sucks, a lot. A long line of clearcut is actually significantly more invasive than the same acreage felled in a square, because it divides wildlife, creates new false edges to the forest, etc. etc.
- No one actually wants this but gas companies. These terminals were successfully driven out of California, and now Oregon has to deal with it.
Anyhow, Fish Creek is an area that the Forest Service admitted it needed to protect better, and they actually pulled out all the roads in the area so as to let the forest heal. And now? A damned pipeline looms. The bridges you see in these pictures are remants of the old roads… you have to hike miles to get to them. Personally, I’m a sucker for ruins, for abandoned elements of civilization. I actually think they’re prettier than regular, untouched nature. I guess that’s why I’m post-civ, not primitivist.
(click on pictures for slightly larger versions).
your pictures always rule
mad aching desire for those colors, wow
I’m with you. Ruins always take my breath away. Remind me to send you some pictures of the old mansion that the illustration on the Vagrants page was drawn from sometime, and take some picks of the derelict railway bridge/tunnel at the bottom of the valley.
Also, if you ever get your ass over here, I promise to take you to see them both.
You’re the first person I ever heard the concept of post-civ from and for that I have to thank you. I’d never come across such a clear description of what just *fit* what I believe. Thank you.
Beautiful pictures of a beautiful landscape.
Like the pic of the rough-skinned newt. They’re the only salamanders you commonly see walking about in the open in the Pacific Northwest. They can get away with that because they’re so toxic (there’s enough toxins in their skin to kill several adult humans).
Yeah… someone let me know that after I hung out with my camera a few inches away. But I guess they’re only toxic if you eat them? (according to wikipedia)