some surrounded by kelp forests. The road quality deteriorated dramatically when we entered the Makaw tribal lands and this set the tone for part of what we saw. The usual decaying single wide manufactured homes still flying Christmas lights. Scrap pickup trucks filled with trash and derelict boats sitting on trailers with flat or missing tyres filled the drive ways. Not everywhere was like this however. The museum was the best insight into north west coastal tribal life we have seen. The wealth of artefacts on display is due to a mudslide which had covered a longhouse 500 years ago and the heavy clay had preserved the house and contents. The displays include a reconstruction of the longhouse with the racks of smoked fish in the roof, cedar mats for separating the areas, raised benches for sleeping and sitting plus several fire pits. Bows and arrows in different stages of manufacture were found as well as part of a fishing net. This turned out to be important in the tribes fight to regain control over their fishing rights. The treaty signed by chief Seattle allowed them to fish as they had done in the past. As they had had a net in the past they won the right to fish with nets today. There was a beautifully made whaling canoe with all its bladders and the harpoon to kill the whale.
They actually killed a whale in 1969 using the traditional methods. The "Nantucket sleigh ride" behind the harpooned whale
The marina was filled with native owned fishing or crabbing boats and was well maintained although we did not see much evidence of landings and there was no fish market as far as we could see.
We spent the night in a campsite on the beach lulled to sleep by the sound of the surf. This beach is the most westerly beach in mainland USA. Our morning walk on the beach was a brief one as the rain had made the sand heavy and the low clouds promised more. They measure the annual rainfall here in feet not inches.
We moved south to Forks next day lured by the promise of a free tour of a sawmill and logging site. The tour started well as the driver negotiated the back streets of Forks and found 40 or so elk grazing in a field by the road. One cow was separate from the rest and our guide, a retired logger, explained that she was probably looking for a quiet spot to drop her calf. He also showed that although he might have retired some years ago from logging he was still an active hunter, regailing us with the different seasons and limits for hunting elk, deer, black bear and mountain lions with bows, black powder as well as modern rifles. I for one one wonder if many animals linger on with arrows stuck in them. I can not believe that the average hunter will track a wounded elk through the woods on foot. No road for the ATV to be found here.
The sawmill was a revelation, clean and well run with up to date machinery some of which was computer controlled. We met a worker stacking 4x2s by hand on to a forklift who had 36 years with Allen logging and he was not unusual. However by UK standards the plant was woefully lacking in safety guards.
Giant exposed chains ran back and forward everywhere moving the timber. One machine which grabbed the logs and chiselled the bark of with a set of giant teeth driven by a large flywheel would from time to time hit a snag or split log and the log would come apart with 15 foot long sections being escaping sideways to land like match sticks on the ground. No safety fence, no warning notice, just the common sense of the workers to steer clear of this area when the debarker was running.As the housing market is depressed in the USA at the moment the price of lumber is down so the mill was not running flat out however the canny owner was stockpiling logs at low prices in anticipation of better days to come.
The logging sites were up a side road and we drove up after our guide had announced our passage on the CB radio. The logging trucks are on piece work and the roads are single track with passing places so it is a good idea to avoid someone trying to make the last load of the day with 20 tonnes of unsecured logs at 50 mph. They take no prisoners.
The sites where the loggers had “clear cut” the forest leaving only stumps
were scenes of utter devastation. Our guide told us that they would be replanted and ready for harvesting in another 30 years or more. But only the faster growing trees like hemlocks were being planted here, The valuable and beautiful cedar was not as it takes too long to mature. Back at the vistors centre I was looking around the discarded logging machinery and came across this old steam powered winch
which would have been used to pull logs out of the forest. However the trees were getting there own back with some revovery to the land.Our guide also mentioned the reduction in logging in this area caused by the spotted owl. Here is a quote from an official survey.
"In the heart of the Olympic Peninsula, the town of Forks, Wash., used to boast it was the logging capital of the world. Now, men who once made their living in the woods are prison guards, and the jagged edges of clear cuts once visible from the town have long since greened over. The listing of the spotted owl led to the eventual shutdown of 2.4 million acres of forest in Washington alone, and 30,000 forest jobs were lost.
The transition away from timber was hard in Forks, with many people losing their jobs, homes and timber-related businesses. But the townspeople say they've survived. And while they still resent the government for placing the needs of the owl over the needs of families, some say the community is stronger because it no longer relies on a single industry."
It was interesting to hear our guides take on the situation. There is still logging going on around Forks but only a tiny fraction of what is a renewable resource is being harvested. People who need top quality cedar for roof shingles are reduced to cutting sections out of stumps left from logging in previous years.
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