The american wilderness system is one of the last remaining hopes for the giants of my homeland.

I grew up in a logging town, in a logging family. "Spotted owl helper" in a box parodying "Hamburger helper" was a common joke item in offices and homes - You can only feel so much sympathy for a critter costing the jobs of people you know and love. Cutting down trees was just part of daily life - Trucks would go by every day with loads of logs, each a couple feet in diameter.

In every cafe around my hometown, there's a few picture somewhere - Maybe one's of a giant log, at least six feet in diameter. It's been cut down and loaded on a truck, just about to be hauled off to the mill. Or maybe there's a huge two-man saw above the order counter - Far too massive to make any sense with modern trees. Sometimes there's a picture of that saw in use, with men climbing 10 feet up the tree before they get to a point thin enough for the giant blade.

Out back in the forest behind my childhood home, there was a tree stump bigger than any tree I'd ever seen in my life. I never thought much about it.

Over the years, I've pieced together what happened before my birth. They cut them down. Almost all of them. Innumerable giant douglas firs and cedar trees used to dominate the landscape I live in. A continuous forest of giant trees stretching from California up through British Columbia. But men came with saws, and saw good lumber in those quiet giants. They felled one... then another, and another, and another. There were so many of them, they were just money for the taking!

But giants are slow to grow, and so terribly, terribly quick to fall. An old growth forest thousands of years in the making, supporting a unique ecosystem found nowhere else on earth... completely gone within the span of a few short human generations.

It, in fact, took 28 years for me to figure out where the giants still existed, and go visit one. A tiny state park, virtually unknown on the map. The ranger I bought my pass from even disparaged his park, saying that several others were much better. But none of those parks had giants, and his did - Just a few. But bigger, more majestic trees than I've ever seen in my life. I'd like to see more before I die.

The logging companies own the vast majority of the forest around here, and are very utilitarian - Replants are done solely with doug fir, not the traditional mix of doug fir, hemlock, and slow growing cedars. And no tree lives long past 50 years, let alone the 500+ needed for big trees. Giants won't be seen on logging company land again.

The national park system is corrupt to the core - Ostensibly safeguarding land for all, the timber is instead sold off to the highest bidder. Frequently roads are even built for the use of the logging companies, at no expense to them. No giants will reclaim that land.

I'll never see the old forest reclaim its ancient glory - I don't live anywhere near long enough, and most of the range is owned by timber companies or national forest anyway. But where no roads can be built, no modern logging can happen. The wilderness system protects a few, rare patches of land. And on those patches of land, a few hundred years in the future, maybe the giants can reign again, and give future generations a small glimpse of the glory of the ancient forest I missed out on. That we all missed out on.