 This is the story of a unique time in the lives of hundreds of now aging hippies who lived in the Pacific Northwest during the 1970s and early 1980s. Tekelma was one of many rural counterculture communities from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington to Mendocino County in California that founded an industry around tree planting. The concept of reforestation runs as deep in the Northwest as the timber industry that produced it. Legions of CCC planters called over slash during the Great Depression. And the Knudsen and Vandenberg Act of 1934 required that reforestation funds be collected from the stumpage on any timber sale. But changes in logging practices and international trade, chainsaw and hydraulic development after World War II brought an unprecedented acceleration in clear cut logging in the national forests. The Sustained Yield Multiple Use Act of 1960 mandated that what was a theoretical maximum amount of timber that could be cut now became a minimum that had to be cut every year on every Ranger District. This notorious requirement was called the allowable cut in the new speak of government ease. Uncle Sam needed to balance foreign debt with Japan and saw the national forest as a quick way to sell something. Timber for Toyotas. With no regard for sustainability, Nixon raised the allowable cut by 10% in 1973 with the stroke of a pen. Here were thousands of acres of clear cuts on hundreds of Ranger districts, followed by a mandate to replant them. Shaved mountains meet the long hairs. The actual act of planting a tree is not rocket science, although there was an actual rock scientist on the crew. A narrow hole is chopped with a hodad, a tool similar to a pick with a flat streamlined blade. And a small bare root seedling is flicked into the slit, hopefully with all the roots pointing down. Roots pointing back upwards are called j-roots and are a big no-no. The hoe is used to push soil back into the hole and compacted with your foot. In the flat pumice soil of the Siberian lands east of the Cascades, power augers could be used to drill perfect round holes which were then filled by planting crews following immediately behind. The hard part of the job was coordinating the crew to cover the ground efficiently on steep slopes through an unmitigated tangle of logging slash in a mix of driving rain and sleet. The work often took on aspects of a sports event performed in full rain gear. The first attempt at fielding a tree planting crew was a disastrous comedy of errors. In the fall of 1971, rumors spread that big money was to be made planting trees. Just show up at the ranger station at seven o'clock in the morning. The employer was a Chicano company called Wo Kala, probably the initials of the western states, and offered to pay three cents a tree and claimed that good planters could plant 2,000 trees a day easy. This turned out to be grossly misleading to say the least. The ragtag army of hippies was loaded into open pickup trucks and driven into the mountains in the freezing cold to a windswept bare hilltop called Cedar Camp. The only instructions given were to swing that hodadi. Planters wandered aimlessly for hours bashing rocks and half-buried logs trying to find soil in the bewildering jungle. Finally, someone said, form a line and follow the next guy. By end of the day, the promised 2,000 trees was more like 200 with a snappy gross pay of $6. Only the most broken, dedicated diehards came back the next morning. By 1973, however, the Forest Service was fed up with the likes of Wo Kala and decided to hire their own crew at $3 an hour and train them right. This time we were to ride in enclosed rigs and even got paid for it. It sure seemed like a better deal. Our fearless leader, a veteran of the Wo Kala depacle two years before, was to be Larry Pudlitz. Larry, despite his longish hair, had been given a 180-day appointment by the Forest Service. The rest of us were to be temporaries. The crew was all male, of course, since such hard work was deemed impossible for the fair sex. Our first unit was on top of Elder Mountain. The crew of about 25 people plotted every inch of that 40 acres for days and even came back two months later to punch in a few more. Today, 37 years later, this is a forest again of 60-foot-high ponderosa pine and Douglas fir trees, some now over a foot in diameter. We planted many more units that winter in spring and learned how to cover the ground completely as a team. There certainly were no shortage of steep clear cuts around the district that season. It wasn't long before local Rednecks took notice of our crew and soon a joke got back to us about a hippie tree-planting crew with a punchline that ended with a phrase, green side up. Those words had a pretty good ring to them, and soon they became the battle cry to be shouted across the hill, followed by a snicker. The Forest Service, bowing to pressure from a gathering woman's movement, allowed a second crew to form using men on power augers and women putting trees in the holes. Typically, the government honchos had no idea what they were doing and went through fiasco after fiasco with the augers unmercifully whacking their male operators after inevitably hanging up on rocks and roots. The women stood around waiting. It was thought that a backpack motor would be somehow safer and the honchos went to great expense to have the screw or the flight of the old augers custom welded to adapt to the new motors. But the flights turned backwards. Instead of drilling a hole, they jumped and bounced up and down and the women continued to stand around waiting to plant a tree. Finally, in desperation, the women were assigned hodads and went to work with the men. This proved once and for all that the work was not a matter of strength but endurance and women had plenty of that. It didn't take long to learn that this same work could be done by contract rather than as employees of the Forest Service. A quick count in simple arithmetic demonstrated that our pay would triple if done as contractors. The Forest Service liked it. They would assign fewer personnel and rigged every job and no longer had to try unsuccessfully to enforce the marijuana laws. In the spring of 1974, several crews had sprung up with catchy names such as Burning Bush and New Land Reforestation to pick off small tree planting contracts near home on the district. John Hoffman was the ranger and initiated policies at the time to integrate the counterculture back into the workforce. He eventually received a medal for his efforts. In the summer of that year, several contracts to pile logging slash were awarded to these locals with an unexpected bonanza of lucrative salvage. After 30 or 40 log truck loads of discarded logs plucked from the slash pile left by the loggers, the hippies were making some big bucks and this didn't sit well in some quarters. In the fall of 1974, all tree planting work was suddenly put together in one huge contract which required a bid bond of $20,000. Their plan was obviously delivered. These behind the scenes maneuvers were intended to push the uppity hippies out of the market and allow the Chicano contract crews to reestablish the workforce. Logging and sawmill interests wanted to control all the timber and the Forest Service wanted crews that wouldn't talk back. For the first time, the entire Kilmock community realized the potential. It was $100,000 worth of work, which hardly required any training that could be acquired if the bid bond could somehow be conjured up. Everyone chipped in and even tapped out affluent family members back east only to come up with $10,000. Finally, in the 11th hour, a local drugstore owner in town, Ed Atkins, loaned the venture of the entire $10,000 to make up the required cash bond amount. We won the contract and named the new company Green Side Up and Friends a year later to be Green Side Up Incorporated. The Forest Service divides the administrative units into regions, forests, and ranger districts. The BLM or Bureau of Land Management has similar divisions but operates independently under the Interior Department. Our home turf was the Illinois Valley Ranger District of the Siskew National Forest in Region 6, the IV for short. It wasn't long before IFB's invitations for bid in the jargon of government contracting came in the mail from neighboring forests and districts. Although these potential jobs were not too far from De Kilma, workers couldn't go home every night and some camping was required. At first, tree planting camps were pretty primitive, sleeping under trucks and eating out of cans, but soon central tents and group meals became the norm. Whether to employ cooks and how to pay them became one of Green Side Up's first big political controversies. Gene Patton wrote a now-famous document on the subject entitled, Chain Saws and Apple Pie. After many emotional meetings and heated discussions, it was decided that cooks would be paid the same rate as tree planters. This agenda of social equality set the stage for future decisions, reflecting values above that of simply maximizing personal and private gain. The company belonged to all of us. Pretty soon, Green Side Up Incorporated became a formal, cooperative corporation under Oregon law, with all members self-employed and responsible for their own employment. This meant no withholding for FICA, IRS, SAIF, and all the other nasty three- and four-letter acronym taxes put out by the government, usually required in employer-employee relationships. Planting crews got an even split of the pot after expenses such as transportation and camp costs. But here another vexing problem developed. Some contracts in open flat ground were gravy, netting a cool $20 an hour, while others were in steep, rocky slash piles paying a dismal $3. The planters who chose the poorly paying job complained bitterly about their misfortune, and the lucky gravy hogs defended their right of each worker to reap the full benefit from each job. In the end, after endless meetings and hours of wrangling, it was decided that everyone made the same per hour regardless of the job. All the money received from the contracts was lumped into a pot and divided up per hour. If a crew elected to have a cook, then that crew would only pay for that expense, and the cooks would be paid at seasonal planters scale. Now the work environment became an expectation that everyone would work as hard as he or she could. Each person's time was recorded to the 15-minute increment, and anyone seen standing around unnecessarily got the stink eye. It was understood that everyone worked at different speeds, despite giving out their best effort. So just like a sports event, the crew developed team strategies that reinforced cooperation for the common good. If it sounded like socialism, it was, and the experiment paid off. Because the acreage had to be covered with an even spacing, typically trees every 8 or 10 feet apart, a technique was developed to work off neighboring planters in natural boundaries we called floating. This technique meant that the entire crew would spread out along a contour, boundary to boundary, and working back and forth to each other. Each time two planters would meet, they would step up one row and reverse directions towards their planters on the other side. The entire crew, regardless of size or individual speed, could proceed to a goal without anyone being left behind. All ground ahead was not planted, all ground behind was done. A perfect game was for the entire crew to arrive at the road at the same moment. A completed job below and all go to lunch together. The planters learned how to support each other, even under the most adverse conditions. Usually the brunt of an angry or frustrated crew was the Forest Service. Piss-fers, as they were referred to in ridicule. Most of the complaints were entirely legitimate since government bungling has been a fact ever since there were government bureaucrats to bungle. We were delivered dead trees on arrival that the government had left out on the dock at the nursery over the weekend and dried out. Some batches got mold in cold storage or had spindly roots or gigantic ones you'd need a back-out of plant. Overzealous inspectors fussed over details in the contract and threatened to dock our pay if we didn't comply with their interpretation of the subtle details. Greensight up leaders fought back with claims and change orders and on more than one occasion asked to have particularly offensive inspectors removed or replaced. Then there were the subtle games and tricks of the trade. Always stand uphill when arguing with an inspector. Good cop, bad cop with pre-arranged scripts slipped the inspector pot cookies and distract Forest Service haunches when the weather was good by having some of the women take off their shirts. Most of the time these ploys worked well and the piss-fers would wander off and not look for any trouble or would discreetly ask maybe for a few more pot cookies the next day. Camp life became the focus of life beyond the day-long work scene. Greensight up bought an old school bus and took out most of the seats and rigged the interior with several lines of bunk beds. The rig was then parked in camp as a portable dorm. Needless to say all sorts of things went on in there. The GSU bus was originally equipped with an overdrive five-speed crash box which almost no one could operate. It was great for cruising on the highway going to an away game but not crawling up and down narrow logging roads in the deep forest. After much grousing and fiddling the tranny was switched for another one with a more appropriate gear ratio and synchromeshing. Greensight up also bought an old Forest Service crummy lovingly dubbed the cattle truck. It was a 1958 forward two-ton box bed truck with two-speed rear end and vacuum assist brakes. The two-speed rear end had a bad habit of jumping out of gear on long downhill runs and then careen freewheeling down the mountain. This did not go well with an exhausted crew and after much screaming and thumping on the cab the situation was brought to the attention of the driver who nursed it back to gear with a grinding jolt. Two 16 by 16 tents were also purchased for camp and their long poles fit well on the bus floor. They were good solid structures and formed the center of camp for meals and meetings. Often food preparation was handled on a rotating basis with each crew member having responsibility to go back to the tents early and rustle up dinner for everybody. There was many different food trips as there were crew members but somehow it all worked out. Tofu or venison? The legal structure of Greensight Up was modeled after another reforestation cooperative based out of Eugene called simply the Haudads. The organization was a hotbed of politics also birthing Lane County commissioners and even a former governor and their meetings took on the atmosphere of a constitutional congress. As time went on GSU joined the political fray and held meetings with other similar community based reforestation cooperatives. Hippie tree planting outfits had formed all over the Pacific Northwest to fill this niche opened as a result of accelerated logging on public lands. Groups like New Growth out of Mendocino County in California, Steep Terrain from Washington's Olympic Peninsula and Homegrown from Southern Oregon's Camus Valley. Workers from Greensight Up went to Bellingham Washington to help train and organize a tree planting crew called Marmot Construction. A trade association called the Northwest Forest Workers Association including almost a dozen such co-ops was formed in these heady political times and annual meetings were held to form common cause policies even lobby for political change. A large erosion control contract was offered in the fall of 1980 by the National Park Service immediately after the eminent domain acquisition of Redwood National Park in Humboldt County, California. Ten Nefua independent groups bid together on the job of cleaning huge unstable mess of disturbed soil on the clear cuts and spur roads left by Simpson Lumber and Arcater Redwood in their greedy rush to cut whatever they could before Uncle Sam took title. This was during the Carter administration and funding for this work came down to provide jobs for displaced timber workers. Good old left thinking. However, none of the local displaced timber workers wanted any part of it. Enter the hippie co-op army. Despite the potential for a tower of babble, the job went very well. Logging roads and scarified hill soaps were permanently put to bed by planting willow and alder sprigs. Water courses were renewed using low tech energy dissipators. The tallest trees in the world, the tall trees grove was spared from erosion and gravel by threatening their roots and we made lots of money doing it. The joint venture of cooperatives proved to be a very strong business unit. Greensight Up's best and most enduring partnership was with Int Forestry out of Forks of Salmon, California. The Ents came from very similar rural environment, although even more isolated and back in the mountains than Tekelma, and they knew basic survival skills from cutting firewood to delivering babies. They had evolved a very similar cooperative GSU and put together a really super camp. Best of all, after sharing all the details of each other's lives for many years, here was a whole new pool of similar young attractive men and women to get to know. For weeks on end, the two groups worked, ate, played music, and of course slept together in the discreet silence of the deep dark forest. The Ents were really like the Gazoos as they affectionately call GSUs. Deep friendships and bonds that formed within the commingle groups have lasted and enhanced down to the present day. Ent and Greensight Up began running really big crews together in 1979. Everything from the initial bidding process to the camp structure to the actual wage was handled cooperatively. Camps of 50 planters or more were set up for six weeks at a time and wonderful music rang out night after night. At times when the storms howled through, everyone had to jump up and grab the ropes to keep the big tents from blowing away. A wild spirit kept both groups together as one working force. For the next several years, the early 1980s, contracts whizzed by like stations on an express train. Prospect, Gold Beach, Medford BLM, Crescent, Ashland, and Salmon River. The combined workforce was big enough to take on two or even three jobs at a time. Besides tree planting, other types of work came up to bid on. BGR, short for big game repellent, involved using a plant sprayer to squirt the terminal bud of planted seedlings with an evil smelling mix of purple dye and rotten eggs. The Forest Service claimed it was applied to repel the deer, but hundreds of cowpies suggested more likely that the browsed seedlings were the result of too many grazing allotments. Piss for bullshit, literally. Greensight out maintained trails in the sky like wilderness and constructed new ones on the Umpqua and the Chute National Forests. GSU crews thinned units with chainsaws, climbed way up in trees to pick cones, and even twice took contracts to study archaeology as an EIS requirement for new timber sales. One of the jobs done by GSU was done for Longview Fiber, a timber company who traded thinning work on units over by the Caves Highway. For tidal to eight acres currently owned by the Dome School, where the Tekelma Community Building is located. Crews worked on 30-something different districts from the North Cascades to Northern California, from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Basin. But then, just when it seemed as if reforestation cooperatives would go on for generations, it all came to a screeching halt in 1983. What happened? Several factors brought tree planting to a close, but looking back on it now, the most important factor was the sudden halt in timber production. This abrupt crash was not brought about by a robust environmental movement. The spotted owl would not become a household word for another decade. This hiatus and logging, however, after decades of intense old growth cutting, was caused by the timber industry itself as a result of the ridiculously high stumpage prices they had bid. When the bubble burst, the greedy timber beasts suddenly found themselves holding the bag at $700 a thousand for stumpage, while the price for 2x4s in LA dropped to $300. Saw mills closed, helter-skelter, two-thirds of them would never reopen, and unemployment climbed to over 20% in Josephine County. Former choker setters and fallers jumped on anything that they could, any contracts that came along for thinning, and the Chicano fruit-picking contractors sensed opportunity and began to show up again. The State of Oregon saw opportunity also, in that here were all these hippie co-ops avoiding payroll taxes and especially workers' comp insurance, and it was high time they should be brought into line. Soon the per hour tree planting wages declined by almost half of what they had been for the big years. In real numbers, take-home pay, which was in the teens, dropped back to a very unattractive $7 or $8 per hour. Finally, the community of tree planters just got too old to keep doing this hard work for very much of their lives. Like professional sports, tree planting is for youth. By the time a person reaches 40 years old, the muscle and endurance necessary to swing a hoedad maybe 1500 times a day for a month straight just starts to break down. Tendonitis, back aches, white finger, hernias, all kinds of other aches and pains made planters like aging ball players in a constant struggle to keep up and inevitably retirement became a reality. Most of the crew worked on to take on new professions and rushed off to get training and certificates and licenses of various kinds. Reforestation never really came back, even after the timber depression abated. The environmental movement pointed out that about 90% of the old growth was already cut and enforced their position with the Endangered Species Act. Timber production on federal lands dropped about 85% with the advent of the Northwest Forest Plan during the Clinton years, and despite the likes of Dick Cheney, it still remains low to this day. But the trees continue to grow. Despite bureaucratic bumbling, escaped slash burns, and full-on forest fires, most low elevation planted clear cuts are now forests again. All in all, somewhere between 25 and 50,000 acres were planted by GSU crews, representing at least 15 million trees and bringing close to a million dollars into the community of Tequila. About the year 2020, a prudent new timber industry can thrive again on second growth, and maybe a new generation of tree planters will trudge their way through the rain with their hodads.