I just got back from a long walk along the north bike path by the Willamette and honestly, it broke my heart.  Everywhere I looked, large, mature trees — some that had stood for many many years — are dead or dying because people are starting fires right up against their trunks to stay warm. You can see the charred bases, the scorched bark, the hollowed-out trunks. I took dozens of photos (a few attached here) because words don’t do it justice. These aren’t little saplings.  Many of these are large and made Eugene’s river corridor so special.  And right next to some of this destruction? Rows of tiny new “replacement” twigs planted by the city, like that somehow balances the scales. It doesn’t. You can’t replace centuries or millennia of living history with a few landscaping sticks.  On the only “bright side” anyone could possibly point to, this year’s record-high river levels apparently flushed a ton of the trash and peoples camp debris out of the area… sending it all floating north up the Willamette with whatever toxins came along for the ride.  Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.  I remember when Eugene wore its environmental reputation like a badge of honor. We used to be the city that actually protected what made this place beautiful. In just the last 30 years that pride has quietly slipped away. Now we walk past dying forests and pretend it’s normal.  Leaders love to stand up and call themselves environmental champions. They give speeches, they pass resolutions, they plant those little memorial twigs for the cameras. But when the real, irreplaceable trees that have been here longer than any of us are being burned alive in plain sight… the silence is deafening.  At the rate we’re going, we’ll be lucky if our kids and grandkids even have a fraction of the natural beauty and quality of life we once had. This isn’t just “sad.” This is the slow, steady erosion of the very things that made Eugene worth calling home.  I also took some photos of melted benches and sick vandalism. Sad.  Time to do better, Eugene. Our trees — and our future — deserve it.

Tens of Thousands of Years of Ancient Tree Life Lost Forever Along Eugene’s North River Bike Path – What Happened to Our Environmental Legacy?