> Ok folks, like the rest of you I try to lead a somewhat noble and
> self-respecting lifestyle. I try to do my part as a citizen of spaceship
> Earth recycling when possible, not eating endangered animals, composting
> instead of burning, and writing my congressman when I think things need
> cleaning up. You know the type. I’m one of them.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that the nicest/best quality wood is generally old-growth. My Night Heron prototype is made of western red cedar with grain so tight that flat-grained strips look like the vertical-grained of other wood I have used. The color is a nice, deep, rich red. It was a joy to work with. It was with out question old growth, probably from some pristine coastal hillside in British Columbia. Once these forests are cut down, it will be thousands of years before a similar forest could regrow in that location. I feel bad about it, but I tried to treat the wood with as much respect as I was capable of.

I am torn between using the nicest wood I can find, or material that is having the least impact. I try to use short pieces of wood whenever possible because these don't need to come from a big tree or it uses parts of the tree that are less valuable for other uses. Northern white cedar has long since been harvested out of oldgrowth wood. But there are times when I want a long, clear, tight grained piece of western red cedar. It is just a want, not a need. I don't need another kayak at all. I could go back to work for the Navy and make sure the electronics in our ships can survive the electromagnetic pulse of a high atmosphere nuclear blast and make more money doing so.

However, I am willing to pay a lot for some nice wood (even though much of this wood is cheaper than I could harvest a tree in my own backyard for.) From this wood, I try to make something more valuable than the several rolls of toilet paper it could otherwise be turned into. I hope I demonstrate that there are worthwhile purposes to which this wood can be put. Maybe by creating something of value from oldgrowth wood, the value of the remaining oldgrowth will be increased. If it becomes valuable enough lumber companies will see they can make more money by selling small quantities to people like us instead of whole mountain sides to make toilet paper. The needs of all the strip-built kayaks in the world can probably supplied by one dead-fall oldgrowth cedar tree a year.

The problem today, is not that we kayak builders are using the available wood, but that the available wood is too inexpensive. If the government did not make it so inexpensive to harvest, there would be more incentive to use the remaining resources more conservatively.