sad sick heartbreaking

I ran with the Tuesday Night TOTs over the Old Boys Trail to the Westside Y, and in the dark saw what looked like a massacre of trees along the trail. Today I got home from work before dark and took a quick run with my camera.

A drilling outfit has been roving around drilling holes I assume to see how far bed rock is as part of a land survey. There are newly smashed down dirt roads everywhere on the 60+ acre plot.

This once was a thick tallgrass--quite beautiful in it's own way.


This drilling rig drills holes every 100 yards or so all the way to the northern boundary of the property. They have to plow through trees to get where they want to drill,


It seems as though falling trees has become more of a sport for these mindless oafs., I would say upwards of 300 perfect trees have been chainsawed or bulldozed over.


This 20 yard swath is a common sight as you run or bike northward. What was once a nice single track trail is now a 10 yard wide dirt road. A trail no longer--as we knew it anyway. A trail of tears--yes.

Another 100 yards and another huge deforested patch.


This made my heart break. Way down at the bottom of one of these plowed down areas, they had fallen this once tall proud and mighty oak. It was not even in the direct path to their drill mark. WHY???


This tree was huge. I would have guessed 3 feet in diameter. I took off one shoe then both to have a point of reference

Then I found a stick and broke it to length so I could measure the diameter.


Almost 31 inches. With a 30.75 inch diameter and a circumference of 96 1/2 inches, this webpage  calculates  the age to be around 100 years old. This was one of the oldest trees on Turkey Mountain. There was no need to cut it down. If the lovely mall were to be built, they would not build on the side of a hill so near the pipeline trail. This should have been one tree they kept.


Bob Doucette asked about his favorite vista on the Old Boys Trail. Here it is.


And here is the road these idiots made right through the area.


Stepping just 20 feet to the north, here is Bob's vista through the branches of a once healthy but now hacked down tree.


More senseless slaughter.


This is on the trail overlooking HWY 75.  This is almost a 10th of a mile north of where this trail pops out above the highway. I turned back here. I had seen more than I could stand.


It seemed they wanted to cut down the healthy trees first. I just don't understand the logic--oh wait--there IS no logic. This story of this tree gets worse.


Way up in the top of this tree was a squirrel nest. I am sure of this. As a teenager, I used to go with my dad squirrel hunting. I don't hunt anymore.


A closeup of the nest. 


Here is the machine that does the drilling. 


A person sits here and plows through the woods to dig holes. It's a job.


They had to get the help of a land scraping front end loader. This small piece of machinery can knock over small trees scrape land so fast it'll make your head swim.


Hate. Hate is a strong word, but I hate the people behind this. I realize the people driving this machinery and slaughtering trees are just doing their job, but it seems like a hate crime.
Midwest drilling, you and the people who hired you, are raping our forest.

For the record. I am NOT AGAINST an outlet mall in Tulsa. I am not even AGAINST an outlet mall in west Tulsa, although if it made the traffic any worse around my house worse, I would be cranky. But Turkey Mountain is the worst place in Tulsa for a development like this. Put it across HWY 75, put it further down HWY 75. Put it in Jenks (I know I know--Tulsa does not want to lose the sales tax $$$.) 

Take away 100 year old trees, pave a portion of a longtime "wild" area, and we lose far more than 60 acres. Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness is something that sets Tulsa apart from so many metropolitan areas. Hikers, trail runners, mountain bikers, bird watchers, geocachers, horseback riders--ALL come from miles away to enjoy this special area. These out-of-towners also eat and shop in our city while they are here. 

Slicing off 60 acres takes far more than 10% of the land we call Turkey Mountain.It brings the noise of the city further into the quietness of the woods. It drives what remaining wildlife that we still have away. Widened roads take away even more of our quiet wilderness. (The road widening is a HUGE CONCERN.)


If you love the wild area that we have, do not sit by quietly while the so-called progress crams a huge eyesore of concrete and storefronts down our throats. Contact your city counselor, write your state representative, post your thoughts on Facebook, and MAKE SOME NOISE!