More Free Land 9/16/2026

1 John 4:16 (King James Version)And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

Last Thursday was a perfect witness for what Forest4Oregon is all about. Roy and I went down to visit one of my Glulam mills and were going to play golf up the McKenzie River at Tokatee Golf Course which is one of the most beautiful courses in Oregon. It was built by the family of some mill owners and had some logging equipment spread around the course as unique accents for the holes.

I had not been up the McKenzie River for over ten years and was looking forward to driving up one of the most beautiful trout streams in the country. Having grown up in Eugene, it was the old stomping grounds and was one of the most incredible camping areas in the state. It was an incredible drive or bike ride up the McKenzie pass running along the Three Sisters through old growth and rotated forests past Cougar Reservoir, Blue River, French Pete Creek, up 5,000 feet over to Bend.

What we did not expect was the remnants of a forest fire that turned the most beautiful forest drive in America into Hiroshima for sixty miles. This fire was like a hundred atom bombs and turned those forests into death and destruction as far as the eye could see with nothing but grey dust covering empty mountains.

It was a gut shot like I never saw before. What was a forest I had ridden my bike twenty to a hundred miles before smelling the trees and the hyper-oxygenated air filling my lungs was nothing but an empty desert of dead trees with a lonely river running through it.

This was the fault of Tina Kotax and her Sierra Club bosses who lectured for fifty years of how ugly the forests were with clear cuts scarring the hills. How the clear cuts would cause land slides and ruin the stream beds where trout and salmon bred. There are no clear cuts now since you could see sixty miles of burned mountains without a single tree. It was the saddest thing any Oregonian could ever witness and nobody in the Sierra Club or Democrat Party cares a bit. Every Dimocrat needs to drive up there to see what they caused.

This is what happens when you worship the trees while killing the forests. How many thousands of deer, elk, and bear were killed in those massive fires as it roared through those river canyons feeding the McKenzie? Imagine the terror those animals felt when they realized they were trapped by a roaring inferno.  It must have been a massive slaughter simply due to some foresters who were told by Kate Brown to let the small fire burn until the winds changed and burned both the Santiam and McKenzie rivers watersheds. That is their way of protecting the fish they continue to lecture everyone about their virtuous caring while they destroy everything.

The worst part is there has been no replanting since the Sierra Club and Tyrant Kotax will not allow the forestry workers to disturb the dead forests. They will not allow men to drive up there to repair these forests and mountains the way they should be taken care of. They want it to remain destroyed since they do not have the courage to stand up to the enviro-fanatics who work for the Sierra Club and their allies.

There is one way to repair and rebuild this destruction, and it is building another Bear Claw Acres up the river. Homestead it to first time homebuyers and let them build small woodlots to pass on to their children. Rather than 5-10 acre lots you can divide it into 10-30 acres and cover some real land. It would take less road and more land to raise trees, crops, or livestock.

It would take between $10-20K for the septic, $10-20K for the well, and around $10-15K for the propane generator and you are ready to build self-contained. Within ten years most of the forests will be replanted and ten more will have harvestable size timber. The old growth has been all burned down so there are no more arguments about old growth timber since the Sierra Club killed it with the rest of the destruction they caused with their no chainsaws, roads, or fire breaks which is a recipe for wildfire like the McKenzie disaster.

If only you could see clearcuts checkerboarding across those foothills once again. If only you could see the river and hills framed in Doug Fir and Cedar all the way up to the Three Sisters, and Mount Washington, not anymore. There is no harvestable timber, so the only answer is homesteading this destroyed land for future generations with the ambition to become stewards of the new McKenzie river before it is completely destroyed by the bugs and mudslides.

This is exactly what Christine Drazan’s plan is to make Oregon land more accessible to Oregonians and this disaster could become a blessing to first time home buyers. It would take hard work, ingenuity, and perseverance, but that is how Oregon was settled and what pioneering are all about. Time to turn a disaster into a gift from God and grow some stewards for his creation in what was one of the most beautiful rivers in Oregon.

Pray for the McKenzie River