Matthew 7:3 and Me

So here is the abridged, simplified, and slightly cleaned up story of my "war" with the loggers. "My woods" in all actuality belonged at first to an elderly friend of our family Mrs. Boberick. She gave my family permission to use the woods and fields like our own, so I began at probably 6 or 7 to start exploring and building in the area directly across from our home. Before too long, I had expanded to quite a bit larger area of woods.  Years later Mrs. Boberick was put in a nursing home by her only son Freddy who lived in Texas, and he asked us to continue watching over the land for him. Then suddenly one day, logging equipment moved in. I rushed home and had my grandmother call Freddy and tell him. Of course he knew about it, and said that they would just be cutting a few of the biggest Cherrys. It didn't turn out like that at all. Before all was done, logging crews had moved through 3 times, and cut trees by the thousands to chip up and fill tractor trailer after tractor trailer to sell for apparently making OSB plywood. Every area of the woods for miles was completely covered with deep ruts that turned into muddy streams that eroded and filled in "my stream" that ran past my first camp. (I spent weeks after they had finished, throwning stones in the ruts to "stop" the erotion and digging out the stream by hand, It didn't work.)   And several places that were special to me where I often went to pray and read my bible, were turned into brush piles and mud. I watched from a distance for days, until the day I sat on top of the biggest hill and watched as a vehicle with a claw and saw on the front cut down the only grove of white birch I had in those woods. That was my breaking point, and I immediately began to crawl as close to these loggers as I could to gather information and see what I could do. Chad while just as upset, just seemed to leave the woods from then on but I sorta declared war. My first order of business was to give them warnings, and hopefully scare them off. So I hid along the edge of the field where the logs were skidded out to, and played a war song on my drum. LOL, They all stopped work and stared in that direction and talked together. Then they picked up a log with the cherry picker and lifted it up a ways in the air as one of them stood on it and tried to get a better view. He couldn't see anything. So I circled to the other side of them and did the same thing. Over and over I circled them from all sides until they looked dizzy, beating on my drum and giving the occasional war whoop, as they tried to figure out what was going on, but never walked far from the log piles. Eventually after I would guess an hour or so, somebody started yelling and turned the radio on as high as it could go to "make me go away":). I spent the rest of the day watching the loggers working in the woods. As time went on, my anger and depression from seeing all of this got really bad, and I started cutting sticks and carving on them to give no doubt as to where they came from, then I would either stalk a skidder, or lay just a couple feet off a logging trail and whip them at their cabs hoping to scare them as they drove by pulling logs. They never could find me while I did this, but when I look back I can't believe just how foolish and desperate I was. So many times I had such dangerous situations. :(  I would sometimes appear just long enough to be seen, and then hide before I could be caught. Only once did I actually run away, when I was in a bad area and had someone coming, but I'm quite sure that I wasn't seen. So sparing alot of  sad details, this is how it went on for months. I either was in the woods fighting to drive them off, or I was in a state of complete and utter depression, never believing that there was a life beyond those woods I had come to love so very much. Finally it was winter, and the logging was over. Their last crowning act was to dump a 55 gallon drum of oil on the ground, which left a solid stream all the way to the river a good 1/4 of a mile away. I begged everyone to call the DEC to come clean it up, but no one wanted to get them involved, and wouldn't help me with their  trucks for fear of looking like the guilty ones. So I spent an entire day carrying bucket after bucket of oily water back the 1/3 mile or so to my home and filled a couple of  barrels with it. I finally just gave up in complete exhaustion realizing that I could never clean something like that up, it isn't possible. I felt like my life had come to an end after all of this, it was painful beyond expression. But God eventually worked things out in the end, to make these times temper my character, and teach me how to deal with situations without throwing sticks at people. :) Before long, I was working on a farm and eventually we were logging in his woods. It took awhile, but I came to realize that there actually is a way of selectively cutting logs and firewood, that can make the forest healthier. It took a long time to admit that one! :) And I never believed that it could happen, but now I can see how God has began to heal the woods again. Not yet anywheres as beautiful and peaceful as they once were, but still it seems a miracle for me to see. And finally the most important lesson that I came to learn, although it is not right to destroy this earth that God has given us to care for, no matter what man may do, it really doesn't truelly matter in the end. This earth in this sinful state, is not our Home. The woods that I still love, no matter how perfectly in order and balance they may seem to be, is still filled with corruption and death. This life is not what it was meant to be, but someday soon that will change. So lets focus on saving souls, not just trees and squirrels! :)