59. Clatsop County, Oregon. To be denied the original forest that stood here is to be orphaned, as children whose parents died in a war. In this situation we can never take comfort from the whole shape of the natural lives that bore us. John Szarkowski has written about how Eugene Atget’s photographs of old trees in France “describe the particular ways that trees articulate their forms, effloresce, bear fruit, grip the earth, claim space and light, and fail.” That testimony of completeness is destroyed by clearcutting, and with it an encouragement to wisdom and peace. From Turning Back, A Photographic Journal of Re-exploration