An evening with ‘Tree Soldier’ author Janet Oakley this Friday….

This Friday....

This will be a special event at the Library this weekend – here’s more from Griffin Bay Bookstore’s Nancy Larsen:

Griffin Bay Bookstore and the San Juan Island Library are co-sponsoring an evening with Janet Oakley, author of Tree Soldier, on Friday, July 22, 7:00 pm at the San Juan Island Library, 1010 Guard Street. Oakley’s novel tells a depression-era story about a young man, Park Hardesty, a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps, who lives and works in a government forestry camp deep in the North Cascade mountains.

A Note From the Author

My 96 year-old Mom is a native of Idaho and during the summers she often went up to her Uncle Lawrence’s ranch in Lowman just north of Boise. One summer around 1933 a Civilian Conservation Corps camp appeared about a mile away. Some 200 young men were there working on projects. Some were from New Jersey. Years later when I had to write a term paper for a history class, her stories came back.  I began to explore CCC projects around my county in Western Washington.

Janet Oakley

The CCC is responsible for some of the most beautiful structures, campgrounds and parks in Pacific Northwest. The young men, working in squads of 6-9 men, also planted trees, built roads and bridges, backpacked fish into remote lakes, and did reclamation work, including dams. The CCC trained the young men in forestry and woodcraft, provided after hours schooling, and taught them to work as teams. In the end they tackled some of the worst environmental problems caused by soil erosion and over-logging. Many have said the environmental movement started with the CCC.

I have had the great privilege of meeting and talking to real tree soldiers. Their stories of getting on during very hard times have touched me. At my first book talk for Tree Soldier at the Whatcom Museum, a gentleman came up to me and told me about how people were literally starving in a rich farming area in my community. His mother put together food for some of these families. He remembers hearing his parents talk about so and so going into the CCC and how that money coming home saved the family.

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