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————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————It was a great victory for us, but outside of our own valley, we watched sale after sale go through. Places with names like: Hot Elma,Skywalker, Wapiti, Uncle Condon, Lobster Claw, Black Snow, Snail Creek, Bluebird, Bluffs, Grass Hula, Little Green Horn, Beaver Pond, Fiddler, Fivemile Flume, Gordey Bluff, Maria Skyline, Red Boulder, Signal Point, Raspberry, Slick John, Starlight, Sugarload, Sweet Thin, Berry Bushel, Angel, Lower Sweet. Each one with its own landscape, its own beauty, history, each with people who knew it, who hunted there, or walked, or drove past. A place someone had named Lower Sweet. A place someone had called Maria Skyline.
I love the names of these places, which are real and not something I made up. The names remind me of a song that was sung a few years back which was simply the names of people killed in El Salvador. The names of these places remind me of that. These are almost all National Forests that have been clearcut. For a while it seemed like the decimation of our ancient forests had stopped, but under the bush administration, it's full steam ahead.