The Hide that Binds

           A quiet carpet of pine needles makes a thick layer on the forest floor, shadowed by a hundred rows of tall white pines, stark against the clear sky. The tops of the trees form rolling dark green hills-- each row gets shorter and shorter until finally they end at the fragile saplings,  transported from the nursery only the day before. And then up again, until they reach their peak, seventy feet in the air. The piney scent in the air is sharp and clean, so different from the fake spray you can buy at the drugstore. Suddenly, the churning whirring of metal on wood smashes the stillness, and one by one, the trees begin to fall. Now, there is a long gap in the rows of trees where the tallest ones used to stand—they will be replaced by their seconds in command and the cycle will continue.  Soon, they are all bundled together, needles are ripped away; giant toothpicks piled onto the beds of so many extra long trucks.  Phase one of their journey is over and now they move on.

Down the road just a little ways, a contented lowing drowns out the faint growl of the chainsaws and a farm, black and white and green all over, is temporary home to its many large lodgers.  Calm brown eyes, tails that swish arithmetically, a careful shifting back and forth—left to right and then back again—keeping the flies at bay; the entire herd roams slowly together. The grass is thick and lush, the perfect beginning, middle, and end to a day here on the farm.   By their pacified demeanor, it is plain to see that these cows are content in the moment and have no ideas about what tomorrow will bring.

Contented cattle in a field of green.  (http://www.saawinternational.org/cows.htm)

Moving from the lush valleys of the Pacific Northwest, down, down until the burning sun shines on land that is flat and wide. The view is broken only by a sound; one not easily identified by someone unacquainted with the natural gas fields of Texas.  An unceasing rhythm, click, whoosh, click, whoosh, draw the gaze to dozens of metal apparatus that look like children’s toys in a land this size.  

A man perches atop a gas rig in Texas.  (http://therightsideofaustin.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/texas-accounts-for-45-of-all-domestic-drilling/)

Far below the surface, the liquid that has filled pockets in the Earth for thousands of years is being pumped to the surface, where it will join the world of the white pine and cattle.

Back up North, the piles of toothpick trees continue their journey on the highway. Red flagging tape waves merrily in the wind at the end of the extra-long load, cautioning motorist to stay back.             When a new smell is in the air—“rotten eggs” people say, noses crinkled in disgust—the truck’s brake lights finally turn red, the tires slow and then stop.  The mill’s power source is high in its banks after a long rainy spring, perfect for generating the power needed to run a factory of this magnitude. Each log is carefully unloaded for processing.  

The Georgia Pacific paper mill. (http://www.penntoolsalesandservice.com/)

First, the debarker removes dirt and bark and then feeds individual logs into a chipper, creating a uniform cereal of wood, ready to be chewed up, digested, and then spat back; a wet, woody slurry.  The mixture is beaten, bleached, dried, and pressed into submission until it has been reformed into rolls and reams for bathrooms, office supply closets, and publishing houses.

Meanwhile, the trucker drives his empty rig back down home to the southland to rest before attaching another load for hauling. After a few days, he is back on the road, this time pulling a combustible cargo that requires careful driving and wakeful eyes.  Natural gas is difficult to transport, and trucking it cross-country is one of the main ways it travels. This batch is heading to a processing plant where is will be cleaned and the impurities scrubbed away until can be used for powering human lives in many forms. But there is a byproduct of this process—when natural gas is only partially combusted, carbon black is formed. The flat, black of this substance used to be considered trash, but now it is a valuable resource—it is mostly used as a rubber stabilizer for tire making, but it is also the main ingredient in paint, plastics, and ink.  Mixing carbon black, a binder, a solvent, and various additives together makes printer ink, now ready for placement in universities, offices and publishing houses.

 Our friends on the farm are noisier than ever. They are crowded onto the flat bed of another large truck, unsatisfied with the change of scenery— these cows are bound for the slaughterhouse. Their carcasses will be used for products that have a surprisingly wide range--from the steak on your plate and the sofa in your living room to the leather binding on your prized family Bible.  Each cow will produce about half it’s weight in the beef bound for the dinner table, and enough leather for eight pairs of cowboy boots for someone’s bare feet.  Before the hides become boots or books, they are processed at the tannery. The hides are soaked and de-haired, and then put through a series of chemical processes before they are ready to be stacked into piles of cured leather. 

            Far from the farms, fields, forests, and factories, a struggling writer takes her finished book, neatly wrapped in a padded manila envelope, and puts it into the hands of the post office worker who will send it off to the publishing company. If she is lucky, they will review it, accept it, and send it to the printing press for publication. If she pays extra, she can get the leather binding wrapped about the paper and ink that will hold her book together the way coffee has held her together for the past two years. And maybe, maybe, it will become popular enough to justify enough printings for the bookstores  or the public library, where it will join the ranks with a thousand other books, all of them which have journeyed from field, to forest, to factory and finally here, to a quiet home to be loved or hated by readers for years to come.