I immediately liked being there. There was a glow of genuine sincerity, and almost spirituality to the gathering. I thought to myself: "Wow, it feels so good to be with this group of people". I felt so proud of these my friends who were fighting on the side of the ancient forests.

But then I had to take a moment to stand back and wonder about what I was feeling. Was I being drawn in by those same old emotions that human groups always feel when they are about to engage in yet another inter human conflict?

I glanced around the crowd a bit more. Near the back corner there was a pick up truck full of fiery eyed people waving signs about wanting to keep their jobs. Just what every human conflict needs: another group of humans to play the role of the enemy, and they came with their own set of emotions that prepared them for their side of the fight. Then away from this simmering of human habits for a moment, I looked up at the thousand year old forests and convinced myself that my rational mind might best lead me a little further.

As I approached the loggers for a few words about their view of the situation one of the blockade organizers hurried over, urging that I should stay away from them in order to avoid provoking a physical conflict. Her assumption was that I would be confronting them as an emotionally committed team member.

Despite her advice I stayed to talk and listen. I stayed long enough to hear them say that they agreed that current logging practice was wasteful and unnecessarily destructive of the forest environment. I heard them say that our valuable first growth timber was being grossly under utilized in the interest of short term profits. But they too are afraid. They are afraid of loosing their jobs and they see the immediate cause of their insecurity as this group of people fresh from the city, most of whom now nothing about the forest industry.

So now I begin to understand. We are all afraid and we are looking for someone to fight with so that we can imagine ourselves as getting at the problem. But, perhaps we should be sure that we have the real enemy clearly defined before we start our attack. Maybe the real enemy is corporate business and its crushingly materialistic value system. We have somehow given the control of our lives to this monster and perhaps we should be putting our energy into trying to get it back.

It looks to me that the loggers, like ourselves, are just pawns in this larger than human game. If we are going to work on environmental issues maybe we need to rise above this “team sports - war” mode we seem to have fallen into, and instead learn to work together with groups such as the loggers. Perhaps we should learn to work together with the loggers to drive these mega-corporations out of our lives and put the forest industry in the hands of people who are capable of managing it in an environmentally conscious way. I think that we should be careful not to let our human inclination for team conflict, prevent us from looking for help to the group of people who are now standing on the other side of our blockade waving "Save Our Jobs" signs.