The surf's up in Forks, Wash.

November 25, 2007

SINCE the spotted-owl wars of the 1990s, western Washington’s logging towns have been treated with disdain by their parent city. Crossing Puget Sound from Seattle, en route to Forks on the Olympic Peninsula, I met an otherwise amiable guy, who, when he heard my destination, said, “What are you doing there — checking out the suicide rate?” So much for Paul Bunyan, once an American superhero, now more often seen by enlightened urbanites as a redneck vandal, whose crimes against the environment make him a fit candidate for a penitential overdose.

In fact, Forks, far from being suicidal, has shown exemplary resilience in the face of the near-collapse of its timber industry. Its traditional pursuits survive in muted form, as at the Japanese-owned sawmill, the plant that turns out cedar shakes and the “brushpicking” business — in which hunter-gatherers, mostly Guatemalan, living in trailer parks on the fringes of town, scavenge the woods for the moss, salal branches, ferns and beargrass that supply the greenery in floral displays, and are exported as far abroad as Holland.

By JONATHAN RABAN

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/opinion/25raban.html?_r=1&oref=slogin