06/04/2026
The Lorax of the Douglas Fir Speaks
I am the Lorax.
I speak for the trees.
But the Douglas fir is not asking nicely anymore.
You stand on Chinook and Kalapuya land.
The bones of the ones who named these rivers are buried beneath your timber towns.
You call it Oregon.
They called it home before you invented the word “clear-cut.”
I am the Lorax.
I speak for the salmon.
The Columbia remembers when it ran so thick you could walk across their backs.
Now the dams grind their bones to silt.
The Willamette is warm as bathwater.
The last wild spring Chinook circles a fish ladder built by a contractor who never missed a meal.
While Nestlé pumps your aquifers for bottles.
While the Klamath runs dry for potato farms.
While NOAA looks the other way.
I am the Lorax.
I speak for the frontlines.
Celilo Falls remembers.
The Salmon River remembers.
The Elliot State Forest remembers.
The fight is not over.
It just moved to a different timber sale
where the forester used to lobby for Weyerhaeuser.
You want a truth bomb?
Here it is:
Colonization did not end.
It just learned to wear a flannel and call itself “sustainable forestry.”
The first waste we need to haul
is the lie that your bamboo cutting board
erases the clearcut on Marys Peak.
I am the Lorax.
I speak for the children.
The ones in Klamath Falls who can’t drink the tap water.
The ones in Portland breathing wildfire smoke that tastes like asthma.
The ones in the Coast Range who watch the last coho redds get bulldozed for a subdivision.
They will ask, “Why didn’t you stop them?”
And you will have no answer
because your answer was always,
“My family has logged this land for four generations.”
Good people mean well.
But good people with good intentions
paved the floodplains of the Tualatin
and called it growth.
Look around this valley.
The Douglas fir is not impressed by your carbon offsets.
The salmon does not care about your reusable straw.
The land wants its body back.
I am the Lorax.
And I am tired of speaking.
The Douglas fir has roots that can split a landslide.
The salmon has a memory that can swim through concrete.
The indigenous people are still here,
still praying at the falls,
still fighting for the Klamath,
still waiting for you to stop posting photos of Mount Hood
and start giving back the land.
The Lorax of the Douglas Fir
Let it land. Let it sting. Let it move.
