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"Trees" by W. S. Merwin from The Compass Flower



Trees I am looking at trees

they may be one of the things I will miss

most from the earth

though many of the ones I have seen

already I cannot remember

and though I seldom embrace the ones I see

and have never been able to speak

with one

I listen to them tenderly

their names have never touched them

they have stood round my sleep

and when it was forbidden to climb them

they have carried me in their branches





This or



This?

















http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/20/AR2006032001595.html

BRAGG, Calif. -- The Big River tract in California's Mendocino County is a sprawling expanse of towering redwoods and Douglas firs, woods that for years have provided an ideal habitat for rare spotted owls and endangered coho salmon and steelhead trout. Now, it's all up for sale.

Big River, neighboring Salmon Creek and dozens of other forests across the nation have come on the market in recent years as timber companies shed holdings that are worth more as real estate than as a source of lumber.

A recent U.S. Forest Service study predicted that more than 44 million acres of private forest land, an area twice the size of Maine, will be sold over the next 25 years

The Bush administration also wants to sell off forest land, by auctioning more than 300,000 acres of national forest to fund a rural school program.

Develop, develop, develop, as we watch sub-division after sub-division spring up in what was farms and forest we find all the reasons for moving to them are also destroyed. The wildlife, the quiet, the beauty of the area all disappear replaced by noise, congestion, ugly strip malls.

Conservation groups are doing what they can to save some of the best land and forest but it takes tons of money. Join a conservation group and donate a few dollars and help. I like the Wilderness Society and the National Wildlife Federation and think they do a good job. The Sierra Club is good as others.

As more and more land falls under the developers bulldozers what is left gets more and more abused from overused. We need to think more of conservation of our lands.



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