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Walked up the mountain to look at the area of private land where the cedars had been clearcut, maybe four acres worth, right where the broad path begins to come out of the woods, where we've hiked a number of times; I remember the naves of those trees way outclassing cathedrals, and the miraculous light that shone down in true and golden holiness through the branches, and now that place is but a hilly vacant lot covered with stumps so a million people can put up a bookshelf. There was the bitter aftertaste of business about it, perhaps its worst aspect, with that mountain beauty all around, watching. It reminded me in a way of the cattle I saw on Saturday with red tags on one ear and yellow tags on the other and orange rings in their noses, staring at me with big brown infinitely patient eyes, there at the brink of beefsteak--- moneymaking based on large-scale death. The land, like a lumbery abattoir, was littered with limbs and large chunks of 'flawed' logs, and there was one good log there that probably simply wouldn't fit on the full truck, but one log wasn't worth coming back for (it's money we're talking about, after all, not trees) and long soft mountains of evergreen branches. Not far away, workmen have been busy for some months paving the stream that is the pond outlet, stone bedding and embanking the modest flow-off as part of the vast public works package largessed by the powers that be who haven't the slightest idea what "natural" means, and couldn't care less. Rivers and streams are being paved everywhere, the general justification being flood control, when in fact it's hogwash.