Dragons and Forest and Rage, Oh My!

Through loss and grief, Jay Bramhall reminisces on a childhood fantasy while questioning humanity’s destructive habits.

“Story” is a fairytale word for a substantive so painfully real. Stories trace the ridges of history, flow through the streams of collective consciousness, and find truth in the roots of our souls. They’re the baseline of humanity—the maps of our history and diagrams of our future. There’s a sickening inevitableness to life dictated through a narrative. That our lives are doomed to play out regardless of our participation, like Battlestar Galactica’s famed, “all of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.” We are all just actors in a predetermined show; the world’s a stage marked blue with masking tape telling us where to stand.

There is also a beauty in playing our part on the stage. Donning our costumes, powdering our faces to appear natural under the blaring lights of the stage. The script written without our guidance or input, prejudices of civilization highlighting our lines on the page. With inevitability comes innocence. If life is inevitable, it is not our fault what we become.

Or maybe we’re the writers instead, and the ink of our ending has not yet dried on the page. We can smudge the words, blur the final paragraphs into something illegible but our own. Not precise, focused, or decided, but still different than what we were supposed to be, still something we can pretend to control.

There are gray spaces between these dichotomies. A nuance to understanding human nature and fate as two separate entities with shared consequences that are often conflated to their extremes. The balance be- tween nature versus nurture, between the fallacies of “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps” and a “selfmade” millionaire suckling fortune from a golden spoon, the difference between impossible and improbable. But writer or actor, villain or hero, knight or dragon, the action producer or the acted-upon— stories are the cornerstone of our humanity. Cave paintings, shards of broken pottery, and centuries of oral narration have proven that throughout history the one defining trait remaining true is our storytelling. Humans have always been human.

I’ve always believed in dragons. Tales of fearsome beasts and inquisitive creatures saw me through adolescence. Raised in a valley within a valley, the surrounding foothills were reminders of the clandestine nature of the wilderness. I knew mountain lions slunk through the wildgrasses, but I never saw one. Who’s to say dragons could not have the same reticence? My parents indulged in me, pointing out rocks along the coast resembling a sharp spine and mountains toting horns. Regular trips to my grandparents on the coast meant regular visits to the eccentric seashell-studded shops that always displayed dragon sculptures. Every visit, a look through my granpar large windows to the backyard welcomed a dragon wind spinner my grandfather placed specially for me, a tradition spanning a decade. I hoarded “dracology” guides and memorized the difference between a wyvern and traditionally four-legged dragons of the West. I practiced ceremonies with aluminum foil and cups of soap and drug home stuffed dragon after stuffed dragon. biosis saved the lives of the rest of my family, both those infected by the disease and those hardened to it. A.A. is a deceptively spiritual program, inciting God and Him, but the program welcomes anyone with a desire not to drink. And really, this higher power is but a well understood metaphor for simply believing in something bigger than yourself. “This power may lie within some person’s religious beliefs, or it can be completely separate from any religion. For example, one member looks at the sea and accepts that it is a power greater than him,” states an A.A. publication.

I remember one moment of fascination in particular. Driving home from the movie theater, my sister and I were delineating between truth and fantasy. Though old enough to know better, I fiercely defended my position that dragons existed, us mere humans just were not clever enough to find them. It went something like, “Dragons aren’t real!” and “Dragons are real!” and so on and so forth. Until my dad said something so profound it broke through the fog of twin tantruming and indignant imagination: “You can’t prove something isn’t real.” I think about that phrase a lot. The understanding that our knowledge is limited and therefore incomplete. We can’t say something doesn’t exist because proof requires evidence, and in the complete absence of evidence all we have is what we know does exist. The City University of New York’s article “The Burden of Proof” states, “the source of the fallacy is the assumption that something is true unless proven otherwise. The person making a negative claim cannot logically prove nonexistence. And here’s why: to know that a X does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience).” What a gift science has given us. The ability to believe in something because the only alternative is unprovable disbelief.

When my grandfather died, my grieving felt wrong. It still feels wrong.

The closest I felt to proper grief was April 14, two days after my grandfathers’ death, on his 81st birthday. My family came together and held an A.A. meeting in my grandma’s living room. My grandfather’s friend led the meeting, my aunt read the 12 concepts and my dad the “How it Works” chapter. My mom spoke first, and I second to last.

God had never been a comfort to me, whether I believed in him or not. But my grandfather had been, still is, and I believed in him. Maybe he was the only higher power I needed, someone who had gone through the worst of the world and came out the other side kinder. To care so much where those care so little takes a bravery few understand and even fewer can accomplish. If I can believe in dragons, I can try to believe in hope.

My grandfather died recently, as in less than a month ago from writing this. His death should have been expected, the man had 13 stents in his heart. Immortals aren’t supposed to die. He spent around three weeks in the hospital, with a few days of respite at home in between. The first stint, we learned he had kicked cancer’s ass into remission. Less than a year ago he’d been diagnosed with lymphoma and agreed to a trial treatment, my whole family was relieved it allowed him to keep his brilliant white hair. Our beacon of light in the dark.

His blood, his heart, his pancreas and prostate. All deadly sentences erased and rewritten. We didn’t expect it to come from his lungs.

Born Italian and Catholic, my grandfather’s alcoholism played off like a cruel cliche. Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.)saved his life, and through sym-

A couple of days before his death, my grandmother made his favorite pineapple upside down cake, and he insisted she bring an additional piece for his nurse. She did, and he waited to eat until the nurse had enough time to eat with him. That’s the man who raised us on A.A., honesty and humility in abundance. When we were little, my sister and I would totter around in life jackets catching salmon from the hatchery pools of the Willamette Valley while my dad and grandfather observed. As I grew, my interest in fishing shrank. My attention span could not even follow the flash of the line, and I didn’t like the taste of most fish. So when my grandfather informed me we would be going ocean fishing along North Bend’s balmy coast, I plastered a smile on my face. I could tolerate the stench of chum for my grandfather. I’ve spent my whole life swimming on the Oregon coast, exploring tide pools, sand boarding, watching for scales and wings in the spray of sea foam—and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve traversed it on boat. Despite my lack of seafaring experience, I felt no sea- sickness, though my legs were nowhere near as steady as my seasalt slicked grandfather’s. Donning his red Alaska Ship sweatshirt, I caught more fish aboard the Betty Kay than anyone else that day. The sprawl of the ocean on each side of us felt bigger than me that day. My grandfather felt bigger than me that day.

Hearing everyone’s stories, I understood then that maybe I had been grieving for a long time, that when you spend your life in a state of lamentation, the final collapse feels like serenity.

Just as the hypothetical member of A.A. looked at the sea and saw something greater than himself, I looked at the earth around me and saw a loss greater than death. Aging amongst the depredation of the planet was a laden practice in grieving.

Now that I’m 18, I’ve finally begun exploring the elusive landscapes I’d spent my childhood watching for scaled wings and smokey nostrils. Now, I still try to believe in dragons, and I yearn for their presence in the ever-diminishing forests of my youth.

The land surrounding the Mohawk Valley is largely owned by the Bureau of Land Management, with whatever is left claimed by Weyerhaeuser. A large company boasting nearly 12,400,000 acres of timberland, Weyerhaeuser determines the landscape. It decides what direction the trees lean and what bark is allowed.

Where the roots take hold are the predilections of a benevolent god sitting in suspenders drinking a tin cup of piss-brown coffee.

I’ve familiarized myself with the winding back roads cataloged by numbers, dashes, and dots. I can tell who owns the land purely by the spread of the trees (Weyerhaeuser’s trees are either clearcut or packed tight enough together to be claustrophobic). I’ve climbed hillsides of basalt and drove along trails of loose gravel. I’ve gazed through the furrowed fir and scratched hemlock canopies towering over the roads. I’ve (lightly) trespassed and found a stunning view of the checkerboarded landscape for my troubles. I’ve given my time to the forest and in return have been granted a look back in time. I can see early settlers letting their sheep loose over the bald, overgrazing the vegetation and grasslands of Horse Rock Ridge. The ghost stumps of ancient trees sprouting new saplings display the past, present, and future. The stories of forests rests in the rings in their stumps, the scratches on their bark, and the vibrance of their undergrowth. The dragons are notably missing.

These woods are a comfort, and these woods need comforting. They’ve taken the role of a dementia-riddled loved one lost to the whims of those left behind.

Confused, dazed by the sprawling world that was decided without their regard. Saws echo in the hollow space where centuries of growth once stood. “If a tree falls in the forest with no ears to hear, does it make a sound?” is a pointless query because someone always hears it. If not the logger, the bird. If not the bird, the deer. If not the deer, the small child sitting in their yard hearing the sagging cry of life becoming limber. If not the child, then surely the stump.

My exploits into this “wilderness” are the product of an endeavor to document the history of old growth forests in the Mohawk Valley, to tell the story of a land worn by generations of settlement. There aren’t many old growth stands left. Most (if not all) have been cut at least once while the surrounding woods were hacked apart an upwards of three times in recent recorded history. Old growth (or primary, virgin, late seral, primeval, first-growth) forests are characterized by their lack of significant disturbance, great age, and resulting large size and ecological diversity. These forests are oftentimes habitats for critical species who depend on the ancient trees. The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) is one such species. In the 90’s, biologist Eric Foresman linked the destruction of old growth stands to the owl’s plummeting population size, and thus began the famed battle between state and federal organizations and science. In 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) was a compromise on both ends, drafted to protect endangered species and economic growth throughout the region. A strong first step in conservation efforts, the NWFP’s standards for logging regulations define the bare minimum for protecting forests and their surrounding ecosystems. The plan created better regulations, but that doesn’t make them efficient. In Stephanie Haugen’s 2017 article “State Forests To Tighten Logging Rules Near Streams,” Mary Scurlock of the Oregon Stream Protection Coalition states on the matter of new stream buffer zones, “the new rule is still inadequate, it’s just less bad than the current rule, it’s carelessly close.”

I am cataloging the effects of the “carelessly close” on the Mohawk Valley. I’ve interviewed experts (some one with a mustache to rival that of Colonel Sanders) and explored old newspapers. I’ve discovered a local historian who found hundreds of photos of the area from a century ago. Black and white stills of an old Civilian Conservation Corps camp demonstrate that people cared. A grainy image showing a man putting his ratty cowboy hat on his horse’s stocky head reminds me that people laughed. Shots of massive trees with canopies arching stories overhead shows that the wilderness was once wild. Thousands of words and pictures and details recounting weddings and deaths and disasters and miracles prove that stories are our humanity.

I have captured film of dead undergrowth in clearcuts and polluted streams full of uprooted logs. I have pointed the lens towards uninhabitable plantations and tire tracks of a land ravaged. I’ve also filmed grand arching awning maws of needle and leaf. Along its trail, the Mohawk Natural Research Area houses “The Giant,” a tree around 300 years old. The surrounding trees’ branches obscuring the view of his crown did nothing to disguise him as king of the forest. It’s an easy image, the kind ruler gazing down on his subjects, tips dipped in white snow, the color of my grandfather’s hair. No one else having risen to his level, he remains exposed to the wind, taking the wind’s blows unfettered by the solidarity of foreign branches.

Further down the path appeared a felled tree. Not one touched by saw or drill, but pulled from the ground up. A wind storm the day before gutted the beast, belly vulnerable to the sky. A hollow several feet high remained where the roots did not. Scrambling down the side, I approached the tree’s core. Roots wriggled out thicker than my forearm, wrapped around dirt and soil, even in death. A natural death proved more awe inspiring than a simple stump. It told a story of more weight than production. The hollow would make a nice home for some small mammal, a fox or skunk perhaps. The fallen leaves would rot and decay, fertilizer for the next generation. Growth, life, death, rebirth, some more death—and so on and so forth until the end. The tree didn’t resent its falling, but it’s time had come and so it would give in death just as it had been given in life.

My investigations have pushed me closer to the wilderness I’ve long admired from a distance, urged me towards the land I have always cherished but feared getting too close to. And the savage truth of it is that familiarizing and opening myself to the forests which I love means familiarizing myself with that which seeks to destroy them.

Primal intimacy is the root of my ambitions towards the project. I’ve long considered myself an angry person. A vengeful one. Not of a physical sort, my fists have never met flesh, but of deep simmering resentment sort. I’ve ranted and raved on the state of the political climate, on the unfairness of a government geared toward profit over people. The way we’re taught their money is our motif, and that their gain isn’t our loss.

The list of disparities doesn’t end, and I used to think of this list as proof of my pessimism. I told myself that pessimists were realists and that optimists were naive and blind to the inequity of it all. But the point of my anger was often misdirected, my moral compass’ true north lost amongst the polar chaos of a world decomposing.

Logging is not an inherently evil entity, nor is it an extraneous one. The history of Oregon is the history of logging. Generations of rural inhabitants have logged the forests, just as they’ve protected it. They’ve traversed it more intimately than most, witnessed the death of old giants and the rebirth of saplings in plantations. There is no one villain in this story, nothing so simple as a greedy king to be overthrown.

I had been turned against my own people by those who wish to tell our stories as nothing more than backdrops to their glory. My list of disparities shouldn’t have been centered around the creatures who use the working class like playthings. It was meant to be about people. Real people who live real lives and whose existence proved that we could be more, that our stories can belong to us.

Reawoken, I am coming to terms with the fact that I care deeply. That my anger is so endless and consuming its seeds can only of been sown in the soil of hopeless desire.

My grandfather taught me of this love, how it often turns to a double-edged sword but still we whisper kindness into its metal and hope its sharpened point finds the shoulder of a new knight instead of the heart of a dragon.

When I lived in a world of dragons, my forests were infinite. On the other side of the foothills lay waterfalls and an endless expanse of wildlife, not freeways and condos. The woods were not fragmented and burned. The dragons had clean streams to drink from, caves untouched to sleep in, and trees more akin to behemoths than foliage to pounce through. A green face greeted me with spinning wings every visit to North Bend. Now my forests are products to be plucked from the shelf and foundations for McMansions with large windows and white couches. Indigenous people removed. Old farmers gentrified. Waterways blocked. Animals extinct. My grandfather is dead. My grief is not. The valley’s stories are not only being rewritten, but completely erased.

It’s time for me to find my dragons again.