2026

The Loop That Pays

Patrick Hardwoods put a saw to the trees other mills would not take. Oregon white oak, bigleaf maple, madrone, myrtle, ash, chinquapin, and tan oak, much of it thinned from crowded stands or recovered from fire salvage, wood that used to be burned or chipped. The mill was built largely by hand from the remnants of a dozen others, and when it runs full it cuts about four hundred thousand board feet a month. The U.S. Forest Service backed it with a one million dollar grant. One cut now pays four ways: it thins the forest against fire, it turns wasted wood into lumber, it puts people to work in a town that had watched its mills close, and it locks carbon into floors and tabletops for another century. The floor of the new Portland airport terminal is Oregon white oak, the same wood Patrick now saws from logs that once had nowhere to go.