Protect The Metolius - Mary Wood, Eugene

Dear Representatives:

I urge you to support a bill to protect the Metolius Basin from destination resorts. The Senate has passed bill SB 30, and now the matter rests with the House.

If there is one way of describing the Metolius River, it is a quiet, peaceful, timeless river that runs like a thread through generations of Oregonians, and back to time immemorial for native people of the Basin. When a river provides the kind of quiet solitude that the Metolius has for eons, it becomes sacred. The Metolius River is unmatched in quietude and beauty.

Families across Oregon take comfort in knowing that the Metolius today is still much like it was when their parents or grandparents first experienced it. You can’t say that about many places any more. Destination resorts epitomize callous disregard of the quietude held by these last few remaining places. Allowing destination resorts in or near the basin essentially converts a priceless natural treasure to cheap cash. Resorts of the sort proposed are a dime a dozen. With thousands of resort homes, the Metolius would be fairly indistinguishable from any other place.

The legislature has a duty to protect the public property of this state for future generations of citizens. This means a duty to resist handing away the state's resources to private developers knocking loudly at the door. The people of Oregon own the river, the air, the wildlife and the forests that are threatened with these resort proposals. As the Supreme Court said in 1907, and again just four weeks ago, “[T]he state has an interest independent of and behind the titles of its citizens, in all the earth and air within its domain. It has the last word as to whether its mountains shall be stripped of their forests and its inhabitants shall breathe pure air.”[1]

Aside from this, it is remarkable that destination resorts would even be proposed at a time when this state, and indeed the world, is trying to CUT carbon emissions in an urgent effort to stave off climate crisis. Destination resorts encourage runaway greenhouse gas emissions. The developers must think they are living in a different era, or else they think that everyone else should sacrifice so that they can reap profits. Either is untenable. The legislature has a duty to address climate crisis on behalf of the citizens of Oregon.

I close this email with a poem that my great-grandfather, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, wrote in 1921 as he was sitting on the banks of the Metolius River at our Camp. He was a lawyer, and an author, and about 70 years old when he wrote this poem. He loved the river and bequeathed it poetically to future generations. I hope this poem moves you to consider the legacy you will leave for future generations through the work of your office.

I Charles Erskine Scott Wood,
Make now my last sure will and testament
For those grandchildren who share with me this solitude
And whom I must too shortly leave.
To my grandchildren,
I give all trout in the Metolius. . .
I give them mornings on the river-bank,
Song of the river when the new sun shines. . .
And the solemn discourse of the pines
At evening when the melting shadows fall
And Peace sits on the bank with folded wings’
The birds all [offering] a good-night call,
And deep in dusk a yellow warbler sings,
The river is for your delight.

[1] Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Company, 206 U.S. 230, 238 (1907); Massachusetts v. EPA, 2007 U.S. LEXIS 3785 (U.S. 2007).