Suck it up, tree huggers

Up here in Ely — a mining town to this day for most residents, notwithstanding the last mine (Pioneer) closing in the mid-seventies — there is a hostile sentiment, as you might expect (or perhaps know from personal experience), towards environmentalists.

If you comment to a crusty old-timer about the beauty of the trees, the woods, the forest — perhaps you are up here camping for a few days, or maybe you own a cabin, or rent a time-share lodge — he will get a glean in his eye and eagerly assure you that all this land (here he sweeps his arm, pointing at the horizon) used to be clear-cut and barren as Mars. (He doesn't say Mars — I added that part. But I exaggerate only a little).

Why? Because all the mighty Old Growth Forest got cut down to build lumber camps and sawmills and railroad ties and bridges and buildings and wharves and ships and so on during the 1800s (and into the 1900s, peaking 1920).

So suck it up, tree huggers. These trees here? There used to be Much Bigger Trees. All cut down, long ago, so don't get whiny. The "Section 40" logging camp near here had 40,000 men at its peak, not sure if that's workers proper or the whole crew of families, camp followers, and barber-surgeons (or perhaps surgeon-barbers by that time, with luck).

Why, my Grandpa (says the crusty old guy, here in my imagination, although I am drawing up a specific conversation that I had with a real individual) didn't get to enjoy those trees either — that Old Growth was cut down by the time he moved from the lumber camp to the mining camp.

So suck it up, tree huggers. Suck it up.

He doesn't actually *say* "suck it up", and if you're polite, which I was, and show interest in mining, which I did, you can learn a lot of interesting history from this elder of the town; and I did.

• Comment @ Facebook (21 April 2021)