Grizabella
I'd be interested, Griz. We drove across the Olympic Peninsula in Washington and stopped in all these small towns, where the cafes and general stores had all these cool old photos of the loggers...lots of interesting history, and I'd imagine that way back when, the people who left the comfy east coast to work and live in the west were of pretty tough stock - as were most of those who went west. I picture something not too dissimilar to the Prairie tarot...
Yes, tough stock is right. My family were all loggers and log truck drivers, cat mechanics, ranchers, mill workers and farming people. My father's family came here from England and settled here before Oregon was a state. My great-grandparents on my mother's side were pioneers, too, to Kansas, where they built a sod house and raised 13 children, all born at home in the "soddy".
Oregon isn't what it once was. We were always good managers of the forests and making sure they grew back once logged. Then people who weren't native here decided they didn't like seeing the clear cut areas and got the government involved and now our forests are not only not as healthy, they're also not available to help our economy. I'd definitely make the deck depict the time period back when there was still all the logging going on.
I'll give it some serious thought because it would be kind of a neat way to honor my Oregon heritage as well as being kind of fun once finished. What a huge undertaking, though! It would probably take me a very long time to get a deck done.