Never Seen Anything Like It - Zygmunt Plater, Newton Centre MA

[Sent to Senators Westlund, Brown, Walker, Metsger, Morse, Kruse, and Johnson:]

I was one of thousands of touring Americans lured each year to the Metolius by its reputation as a unique “place apart” from the creeping degradation and exploitation of so much of this great country’s great places. My Oregon friends found it hard to describe the Metolius to my family and me. “Just go there, and you’ll realize why you’ve never seen anything like it.”

We went to the Metolius a week after 9-11, a time when the world writhed in pain and parents like us felt gut-sickened that their children’s future might forever be burdened by evil. Two of the highjackers had departed from an airfield nearby in the Oregon high country. It seemed as if everything hopeful was tainted.

And then one early morning we turned down the road to Camp Sherman, where we found a community breakfast going on at the fire hall — almost every living soul in the valley had gathered for a breakfast to raise money for the victims of 9-11. From the breakfast table we went on to the glades along that magic river, from where it pours forth from the mountain to the stretches where it opens out into lush meadows. An unspeakably beautiful river, unique, more intimate and calming than any other I have ever known. The Metolius gave us a measure of peace and joy at things timeless. To one of the children it was a river straight out of the Shire in the Lord of the Rings.

Oregon, and no place else on earth, has had the Metolius for aeons. It would be such a desecration to turn it into just one more preclusive real estate development destination. For Oregonians of future generations, and generations of other Americans from afar like me and my family, I ask you please to pass the Senate bill into law.

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Zygmunt J.B. Plater
Boston College Law School
Newton Centre, Mass.