Camp 6, Pt. Defiance Park

I found it somewhat ironic that my entrance to Pt. Defiance Park, which symbolically turns out to be the exit for most visitors, should be “Camp 6,” a historical display of logging equipment donated by Weyerhauser.

The irony of the logs used as skids on these towering machines being thicker than any of the trees I was able to observe on my walks wasn’t entirely lost on me, either.

No matter how much destruction of the native forests these machines were responsible for, there’s an undeniable fascination with their sheer size and power, a size merely suggested by these shots, for it would take a movie camera to truly put them into perspective.

Strangely, the combination of giant logs and steel suggests surrealistic images from Mel Gibson’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and perhaps that explains their fascination for me. Perhaps they somehow suggest long-forgotten links between nature and the industrial revolution, links easily forgotten while sitting in front of a computer screen.