Though I totally love the people, cultures and landscape of Eastern Europe, I was deeply homesick for the forests of Cascadia, specifically the Willamette Valley forests I grew up around. In the academic year of 1994-1995, I ended up doing graduate work in Eastern Europe studying nationalism and ethnic minorities. So that began a subconscious search for what I would call a transformative icon. I also knew it was not something one necessarily went out and found, but it was something that would reveal itself when it was time. I knew whatever that was, that catalysis, it had to be emotion driven and needed to have that “aha” moment or epiphany at the human conscious level. It was at this point I started to search for some means to shift the consciousness of people from anthropocentric (human centered) to one that was biocentric (life centered). It was death and ecocide and its goal was eventually terracide. I realized then that I needed to get into the minds of the chainsaw wielding workers and the bulldozer operators who would just scuff at my protest and say “it’s just my job” or “if I don’t someone else will.” I had heard those words repeatedly or from the real estate developer himself “you cannot stop progress.” First of all this was not “progress” it was greed and dominion over Nature. The damage was done, but as we tried to stop the loggers I realized this was a losing battle. It was an illegal cut as the city council were discussing if the “development” should take place given neighborhood protests and local media coverage. One day at my forest, the real estate developer had secretly ordered the cutting of all the trees while he was supposed to be arguing his case before Portland city council. It was a losing battle as suburbia wiped out lots of forests and fields on the edges of Portland’s expanding urban growth boundary. I would even go into a forest where trees were marked with spray-paint (marked to be cut) and repaint them with paint matching the color of the bark so the hired tree cutters could not figure out which tree to cut.
I would do my version of forest defense, which meant pulling up surveyors’ stakes, pulling down real estate signs and sometimes damage to equipment.
I would enter the forest after school and just listen to Nature. I was very well in-tune with the forests and the open fields (White Oak Savanna) on the south slope of the shield volcano I grew up on. When I was in high school (early 1980s) I was fighting against deforestation and mass building of suburbia around my home in Portland. The lone standing Douglas fir symbolizes endurance, defiance, and resilience against fire, flood, catastrophic change, and even against anthropocentric Man.Īll these symbols of color and icon came together to symbolize what being Cascadian is all about. The green is the forests and fields which too carry life giving water through our biodiverse land. From liquid into vapor (mist and clouds) and from vapor into solid (ice and snow) and melting back to liquid or vapor. The white is for the snow and clouds which are the catalyst of water changing from one state of matter to another. For Cascadia is a land of falling water from the Pacific to the western slopes of the Rockies where water cycles as vapor and then rain and snow to run through creek and river back to the Pacific. Our home is of continuous cascading waters flowing from our sky and mountains back to the Pacific. The blue represents the moisture of rich sky above and Pacific Ocean along with the Salish Sea, lakes and other inland waters. Unlike many flags, the Cascadian flag is neither a flag of blood nor a flag of the glory for a nation, but a love of the bioregion our ecosystems and the place in which we live and love. The Cascadian flag captures that love of living communities in our bioregion. This piece was originally published in Cascadia Spoke, a community publication dedicated to raising awareness of the Cascadia movement and bioregionalism.
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