Crop or Monument? Therein Lies the Rub : Summit: Is a tree a commodity or nature’s wonder? Promise of forest dispute settlement stirs hope, unease.

Some of the giant trees took 500 years to mature. The giant fight about their future has been building for a decade. And now the promise of a “settlement” by presidential decree has the Pacific Northwest holding on with white knuckle jitters.

Progress. Hope. Solution. Healing. Those were the words of President Clinton’s forest conference.

But there was a sharper edge to the moment. The loggers and environmentalists and salmon fishermen and mill operators have spent too long perfecting their fight. Their differences are cultural.

And it takes no expert to understand the difficulty of splitting a Douglas fir between a culture that believes a tree is a simple crop to be harvested and a culture that regards the tree as nature’s monument to be preserved.

To many of the combatants, Friday’s long day around a polished wood table at the Portland Convention Center was like a celebrated custody trial. With hundreds of reporters and cameras watching every move, the case was pleaded--for jobs, lumber, wilderness, salmon, ancient forests and for the differing cultures of people who are fighting for the deed to the future of the Northwest.

And then the case went to the jury of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and five Cabinet officers.

More than the handful of hand-picked panelists and the invited audience, thousands of Northwesteners gathered in Portland this week not knowing if they would eventually celebrate or mourn. All they could do was join in the hoopla of hope, and figure that, among Clinton’s many promises, there would be something for them.

The Portland Oregonian was swollen with advertisements from groups hoping to catch the eye of the largest presidential delegation ever to gather in this city. On one page, Canadians pleaded for an end to U.S. import levies on their wood. On the next, private land owners asked Clinton not to restrain the export of raw logs from private U.S. forest lands. One man who was denied a place on a panel put his statement into the form of an ad.

Another full page ad proclaimed: “Pacific Salmon Massacre.” It was paid for by environmentalists, who are seeking allies in the working-class culture of the coastal region, appealing to salmon fishermen with the argument that logging is destroying spawning streams.

Billboards, radio advertisments and practically everything else that could carry a message did.

“Yo Bill and Al. 90% of ancient forest is cut. Save what’s left,” said one theater marquee in downtown Portland.

Hundreds of logging-related companies from Northern California, Oregon and Washington state closed for the conference. Their workers traveled by bus caravan for a daylong rally in a cool but steady Northwest drizzle.

“People are scared. . . . It can’t get much worse. . . . I’m worried my parents won’t have a job,” said Elizabeth Bailey, one of the improbable celebrities of the summit.

In T-shirt and tennis shoes, the well-mannered and convincing 11-year-old from Hayfork, Calif., told everyone who would listen of the downward spiral of her logging family and neighbors. She came to Clinton’s eye as a result of a letter she wrote on the subject and continued the charm, telling television interviewers: “Thank you, Mr. President, thank you for coming.”

Portland police estimated that 50,000 people attended a free rock concert Thursday night to support preservation of the remaining old-growth timber. The concert, too, was held in the rain.

“Nice weather for trees,” said singer Neil Young.

“In between the music, when it’s very quiet you can hear the Earth crying,” said Denis Hayes, originator of Earth Day. “We’re shredding her forests at the rate of two acres a second, and it’s got to stop.”

Even people in the middle could not help but be emotional. During one conference panel, Northwest lumberyard owner Ken Marson itemized the recent sharp rise in wood prices as proof of the need for more logging. But then he added: “I’d be the first one out there to complain if they destroyed the view out my window.”

It’s probably inevitable that conflicts as deep as this one lead to overstatement, hyperbole and misstatement.

Among the wildest claims was from environmentalists who said that continued logging would wipe out all of the remaining old growth trees in the Northwest. In fact, about half of the remaining virgin forests in the region, some 3 million acres, already are protected as national parks and wilderness areas.

On the other side was the claim that logging has come to a halt in the Northwest because of environmental lawsuits and a spotted owl court injunction by U.S. District Court Judge William L. Dwyer. Actually, Dwyer ordered a halt to new federal timber “sales” in owl habitat, but cutting has continued on public lands from sales approved during previous years.

Logging also continues on the richly forested private lands of the region.