Subject: [Tweeters] Military Intelligence.
Date: Sep 26 10:16:14 2014
From: Jeff Gibson - gibsondesign at msn.com


On a recent visit to Fort Townsend State Park, near Port Townsend, I was inspired by history. By military intelligence.

Wars have always been started as a matter of controlling interest's -" resources" - like the earth, and all it's inhabitants, including our fellow hominids. They even had a war about bird shit (guano) in Peru way back when (1800's). "They "needed the stuff ( for saltpeter) to fuel weapons, and for high octane fertilizer for early agribiz.
Freedom - free will - is not supplied by any government, or military. And that's why, in an old fort on Puget Sound, I was thrilled to see some wonderful examples of intelligence within the military. Tree planters!
Fort Townsend was founded in 1856 , in part, to protect "settlers" from potentially "pesky injun's" ( those folks who were kinda upset by their greedy new neighbors with pants full of Manifest Destiny). So the fort was hacked out of a patch of fir forest there on the Sound. Barracks, etc. were built.
Apparently the place was a real loser as a fort - not enough fightin' goin' on. However, somebody in the military planted some trees, which I find a sort of amazing example of intelligence for the era. Somebody, even as the place was developed in 1856, thought it would be nice to plant some new fir trees around their new field, and buildings, which they did - fir trees in straight lines along former roads, etc.
According to the interpretative signage at the site, these ol' Douglas fir trees are maybe the oldest planted fir trees in Washington State. In 158 years these firs have done very well - the largest, with the huge low branches of a tree grown out in the open, has a trunk about 5ft in diameter.
Actually, these big planted firs are some of the largest trees in this park, which, I noted in a previous post, is largely covered by a maturing forest about 150+ years old. That really got me thinking about how cool the act of planting those trees was. Planting a tree makes a difference far into the future. The fort is gone, but the trees remain.
The poet Diane di Prima wrote: "the only war that matters is the war against the imagination". Somebody, back in 1856, won that war by planting some trees. Further battles were won by folks who protected those trees over the years - it takes some care - and imagination. While we can't "mitigate" an old-growth forest (we don't really know how) we can preserve some, and help it spread out- all the genetic info required is contained in the forest itself.
So, soldier, with botanical intelligence, grab a shovel, plant a tree, watch it grow. Imagine what could be.
Jeff GibsonWherever, Wa