The Strongest Winds

Ten years ago, Joan Mann witnessed great old forests near her home at the Washington coast leveled to make way for more houses. After the trees were gone, she noticed that when it rained the flooding was worse. Plus there was no forest for the bears to paw through. This wasn’t right, Joan thought. So she acted. She took out a second mortgage on her house and she bought as much forest as she could. Then she turned around and donated the land to Columbia Land Trust, while she still had the mortgage to pay. Joan said that she slept better at night.

Two years ago, Columbia Land Trust raised nearly $2,000,000 in gifts and obtained interest-free loans from six land trust members so that we could conserve an amazing old forest on the Long Beach Peninsula just south of Joan’s forest. In this forest, trees are so big and tall that you lose your balance craning your head back to see their tops. This forest of cedar, fir and hemlock has been growing for hundreds of years, reaching to the sky inches per year. Spectacular old snags are mixed in with living trees that are twelve feet around at their base; a thick complex of downed trees now serves as a criss-cross of nurse logs, supporting new life.

One year ago, the wind blew. For three days, never dropping below 50 miles per hour, the wind blew. For three days in a row! The strongest winds were more than 100 miles per hour. On the forest plantations at the coast, thousands of acres of young trees were blown down, leveled. Our conserved forests seemed so massive, so intact, surely even these strong winds would have spared our trees! But had they?

When the wind finally stopped blowing, and the downed trees and power lines were cleared from the roads, we inspected our forests. While it was heartbreaking to see trees of more than 300 years old that had been thrown to the ground, the forest remained largely intact. And the downed trees will now serve as nurse logs, offering new life as they decompose, which will likely take yet another 300 years.

Two months ago, winds of economic loss started blowing around the world. It turns out that mortgages and loans, among the tools that we’ve used for conservation, were overused on a large scale.  The wind of this storm has now spread across many of our economic landscapes. Most every community has been touched.

And yet as we take stock we find strength, like that in our big old forests. This strength is in each and every one of you, our members. History has shown that non-profits that receive gifts from a broad range of members can weather economic storms quite well.

We depend on each of you. We are rooted in you. We will weather this storm with you.

Last week Ken White called to tell me that a client of his had recently died. Through her will, she directed him to donate her Long Beach Peninsula land to Columbia Land Trust, for forever conservation. Her land, north of Joan’s donated forest, contains important forest and tideflats and provides an essential link from the forests to Willapa Bay.

Just as our forests keep growing through storms, our conservation work surges ahead even in these challenging times.

Thank you for your sustaining support.