Oso Landslide

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Oso Landslide

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Tell me did you know the news that came from Oso, out in Washington, quiet logging town
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The grass was turning green in March two thousand fourteen, when the ridge above came came tumbling down
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No rest for them that night, digging by the big flood lights, rescue workers fighting through the mud
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And there’s 28 folks dead on the road they call Steelhead, and that Rocky Mountain timber’s stained in blood

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And through the foggy air the mountain’s rising bare over the slopes of the Cascades
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And still the rain is falling, still the timber’s hauling and still its price is paid

They said it was a landslide from the rain that raked the hillside, dragging soil cool and black
down the winding logging road, where they hauled the mother lode, down beyond the timber stacks
strip the forest off the hills, through the yards and timber mills, piled on the Tacoma docks
To build condo blocks and strip malls, cheap timber frame with drywall, build up futures and build up stocks

For year on top of year, they’d cut the hillside clear, too bare now to hold it from the flow
of the cold and tireless waters of the wild Stillaguamish, digging out the ridge from down below
It was the logging axe and drag line, as sure as any strip mine, that cut the Oso hillside down
and in its last accounting, first the company killed the mountain, then the mountain killed the town