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Logging Is the Deadliest Job, but Still an Oregon Way of Life

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In southwestern Oregon, semi trucks loaded with logs snake along roads through dark, lush forests of Douglas fir. The logging industry has shaped and sustained families here for generations.A steady demand for lumber and a lack of other well-paying jobs in rural parts of the state have made logging one of the most promising career paths.It also comes with grave risk.A glossary of logging terms includes an entry for heavy broken branches that can fall without warning: widowmakers.Inside the Deadliest Job in AmericaMostly employed in densely forested pockets of the Pacific Northwest and the South, loggers have the highest rate of fatal on-the-job injuries of any civilian occupation in the nation, outpacing roofers, hunters and underground mining machine operators.About 100 of every 100,000 logging workers die from work injuries, compared with four per 100,000 for all workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Logs stacked for shipment at a port in North Bend, Ore.“There is a mix of physical factors — heavy equipment and, of course, the massive trees,” said Marissa Baker, a professor of occupational health at the University of Washington who has researched the logging industry. “Couple that with steep terrain and unforgiving weather and the rural aspect of the work, and it leads to great danger.”In the most rural stretches of Oregon, where swaths have been scarred by the clear-cutting of trees, many workers decide the risk is worth it. Most loggers here earn around $29 an hour. And average timber industry wages are 17 percent higher than local private-sector wages, according to a recent report from the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.Logging operates mostly year round, with workers usually bouncing among companies — sometimes called outfits — where pay can vary according to the specific job that needs to be done. But the industry has declined steeply since the 1990s, partly because of competition from other countries, including Brazil and Canada, and years of legal battles as conservationists seek to limit logging in old-growth forests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.S. Awards Chip Supplier $162 Million to Bolster Critical Industries

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    The Biden administration said its second grant under a new program would help Microchip Technology expand its facilities in Oregon and Colorado.The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to provide $162 million in federal grants to Microchip Technology, an Arizona-based semiconductor company that supplies the automotive, defense and other industries.The agreement is the second award announced under a new program intended to help ensure that American companies that rely on semiconductors have a stable supply. Last month, the Biden administration announced a $35 million grant for BAE Systems, a defense contractor.The investment will enable Microchip to increase its production of semiconductors that are used in cars, airplanes, appliances, medical devices and military products. The administration said it expected the award to create more than 700 jobs in construction and manufacturing.“Today’s announcement with Microchip is a meaningful step in our efforts to bolster the supply chain for legacy semiconductors that are in everything from cars to washing machines to missiles,” Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo said in a statement.Microchip plans to use $90 million to modernize and expand a facility in Colorado Springs and $72 million to expand a facility in Gresham, Ore. The administration said the funding would help Microchip triple its output at the two sites and decrease the company’s reliance on foreign facilities to help make its products.The company’s chips aren’t cutting-edge but are key components of nearly every military and space program. Microchip is one of the largest suppliers of semiconductors to the defense industrial base and a designated trusted foundry for the military. It also plays a crucial role in industries that are important for the national economy, U.S. officials said.That role became more obvious during the pandemic, when a global chip shortage cast a spotlight on domestic suppliers like Microchip. With foreign chip factories shut down to help contain the virus, automakers and other companies scrambled to secure supplies. As a result, demand for Microchip’s products surged.Those shortages also helped motivate lawmakers to pull together a funding bill aimed at shoring up American manufacturing and reduce reliance on foreign chips. The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act gave the Commerce Department $53 billion to invest in the semiconductor industry, including $39 billion for federal grants to encourage chip companies to set up U.S. facilities.The Commerce Department is expected to begin announcing larger awards in the coming months for major chip fabrication facilities owned by companies like Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known as TSMC.Microchip previously announced plans to increase its capacity in both Oregon and Colorado, but the government funding would be used to expand those enhancements and bring more production back to the United States, officials said. According to its filings, Microchip relies on outside facilities to make a significant proportion of its products — roughly 63 percent of its net sales in 2023 — a relatively common practice in the industry.While attention has focused on ensuring that U.S. facilities can manufacture some of the world’s most advanced chips, there are growing concerns about Chinese investments in less advanced semiconductors, also known as legacy chips, which help power cars, computers, missiles and dishwashers.U.S. officials are questioning whether such investments could increase the United States’ reliance on China or allow Chinese firms to undercut competitors. The Commerce Department has said it plans to begin a survey this month to identify how U.S. companies are getting their legacy chips and reduce security risks linked to China.The deal announced Thursday is a nonbinding preliminary agreement. The Commerce Department will carry out due diligence on the project before reaching the award’s final terms.The department said it had received more than 570 statements of interest and more than 170 pre-applications, full applications and concept plans from companies and organizations interested in the funding.Don Clark More

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    A Higher Monthly Payment, but Less Square Footage

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    Homebuilders are responding to rising interest rates with an innovation: a small house in the traditionally spacious exurbs.The American home is shrinking.With interest rates rising and mortgage costs with them, homebuilders are pulling in yards, tightening living rooms and lopping off bedrooms in an attempt to keep the monthly payment in line with what families can afford. The result is that new home buyers are paying more and getting less, while far-flung developments where people move for size and space are now being reimagined as higher-density communities where single-family houses have apartment-size proportions.In a recent survey of architects, John Burns Research and Consulting found that about half expected their average house size to decline. New communities will have more duplexes or small-lot single-family homes that are just a few feet apart. Even in Texas, where land is abundant, builders are adding more homes per acre, the company found.“The monthly payment matters more than anything else and builders have responded with smaller, more efficient homes,” said John Burns, the company’s chief executive.Consider Hayden Homes, a Pacific Northwest builder that focuses on small towns and exurbs where middle-class families (its typical buyer has a household income of $90,000 a year) have historically traded more house for a longer commute.Two years ago, when interest rates were low, the average Hayden home was a 1,900 square-foot three-bedroom that cost $500,000, or about $2,000 a month, said Steve Klingman, the company’s president, in an interview. This assumed a 5 percent down payment and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 3 percent interest rate.Now, as borrowing costs consume more of buyers’ mortgage payments, Hayden is lowering prices and square footage to keep customers’ payments stable. The average Hayden home is now 1,550 square feet and costs about $400,000, or $2,100 a month, Mr. Klingman said. To buy it, however, a customer has to produce a 10 percent down payment and, even with incentives, is paying a 6 percent rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.“We are reconfiguring our floor plans, our features and community design all to get to that payment buyers can afford,” Mr. Klingman said. “People want to own if we can make it attainable.”In dense areas like Southern California, the high cost of land has long led developers to focus on compact homes. Trade-offs like a side yard instead of a backyard, or a garage that opens to the street instead of a driveway, have compressed size and reduced cost. Now those kinds of urban designs are arriving in the exurbs.For instance, in Hayden’s hometown, Redmond, Ore., a city of 35,000 about 30 minutes from Bend, Ore., its Cinder Butte Village development now has homes as small as 400 square feet (a one-bedroom, one-bath with a garage on the back alley). The average is around 1,000 — half the typical home size in the community two years ago.Mr. Klingman expects smaller homes to drive the market in the coming years. Hayden shifted all of its floor plans down as mortgage rates started rising and has prototypes for new communities that are twice as dense as the ones it built during the pandemic.“I think this is for the long haul,” Mr. Klingman said.In Cinder Butte Village, new homes will be much closer together than those built a few years ago.Amanda Lucier for The New York TimesNew homes are a tiny slice of the U.S. housing stock — builders started about 1.5 million houses and apartments last year, while 142 million already existed — but since they are built in every market and bought almost entirely with mortgages, their size and cost are relatively sensitive to changes in the economy. This makes fresh construction a useful picture of how families are affected by higher borrowing costs.American families have for generations had more space than households elsewhere in the developed world, but their homes were shrinking even before interest rates rose. The median new U.S. home peaked around 2,500 square feet in 2015. Over the next five years, new homes shed about 200 square feet as costs rose, urban living boomed and smaller families became more common.The pandemic, with its rock-bottom interest rates, led to what seems poised to be a short-lived increase. As white-collar workers ditched their commutes, and home-based offices went from perk to necessity, builders added rooms and exurban subdivisions thrived.Today’s buyers are dealing with the hangover. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has roughly doubled over the past two years, to 7.57 percent, according to Freddie Mac. This has all but frozen the market for existing homes by making buyers who locked in low rates reluctant to trade up or move, keeping home prices stable despite a huge increase in borrowing costs.The price that sellers will accept “is unusually high,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, the real estate brokerage. “They need somebody to buy them out of their mortgage.”The decline in the inventory of existing homes for sale has made new homes a much bigger slice of the market. New home sales have consumed about a third of the market this year, or double the level in 2019, according to Redfin.Homeowners who can’t get their price can always sit out the market. But homebuilders have to sell to survive. And in a market where borrowing costs are consuming more of their buyers’ payments, and after years of rising material and labor costs, that means selling less house.The cuts will not be equal. In its survey, the John Burns consultancy found that dining and children’s rooms are being sacrificed to preserve bigger kitchens and primary bedrooms. To do this, builders are replacing tubs with showers. They’re expanding kitchen islands so they double as a dinner table. Outdoor spaces are being connected by covered patios and wall-size sliding doors that make a smaller living room seem open.Bigger is still better, even if it only feels like it. More

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    Biden Tries to Reassure Voters on Health Care Costs Before Election

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    At an event in Southern California, the president says his administration is working to keep costs down and warns that Republicans will drive prices higher if they gain power.LOS ANGELES — President Biden on Friday tried to reassure Americans stung by high inflation that his administration was working to keep health care costs down, promising a community college audience in Southern California that he was committed to doing even more.But his remarks in Irvine, Calif. — the first of two West Coast speeches devoted to health care costs — come just days after government data revealed that overall inflation remains high as voters prepare to go to the polls for midterm elections early next month.Surveys show that Americans are deeply frustrated by the impact of sharply higher prices on their pocketbooks. They are expected to rebuke the president and his party in the elections, with most analysts predicting that Democrats will lose control of one or both chambers in Congress.Speaking to a friendly audience, Mr. Biden argued that Republicans would drive prices higher if they gained power. He noted their opposition to his efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which he said would force prices down for medication for millions of seniors. And he said Democrats had pushed through price caps on critical drugs like insulin.“If Republicans in Congress have their way, it’s going to mean the power we just gave Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices and other costs over time goes away — gone,” Mr. Biden said, standing in front of signs that said “Lowering Costs for American Families.” “Two-thousand-dollar cap on prescription drugs goes away — gone. The $35 month cap on insulin for Medicare is gone.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.Mr. Biden’s three-state, four-day trip is also intended to boost the fortunes of Democratic candidates by using the presidential bully pulpit to highlight the party’s accomplishments. On Wednesday in Colorado, he stood next to Michael Bennet, one of the state’s two Democratic senators, to announce a new national monument — a key campaign promise for the embattled lawmaker.In Los Angeles on Thursday, Mr. Biden hailed the use of money from his infrastructure legislation to help complete a new subway line. During his remarks, he made certain to single out Representative Karen Bass, a Democrat who had fought for a provision that directs jobs on the project to local workers.“Local workers can be first in line for these jobs thanks to Karen,” Mr. Biden said. “I really mean it, Karen. Thank you very much.”At the community college in Irvine, Mr. Biden focused his attention on health care — and on Representative Katie Porter, a two-term Democrat running for re-election in a key swing district in Orange County.Ms. Porter, who is facing Scott Baugh, a Republican former state assemblyman, pushed for the drug pricing measure. At the event on Friday, Mr. Biden singled her out, crediting the success of Democratic legislation to her efforts to fight on behalf of her constituents..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“That’s why Katie’s leadership and the work of the Democrats in Congress was so consequential,” he said. “Katie, I’m not just being nice because I’m in your district. It happens to be true. No, no. I mean, you’re a fighter. You’re decent. You’re honorable and everybody respects you.”Friday’s event at the Irvine Valley Community College was an official one, not a campaign rally. But Ms. Porter used her time at the podium to assail Republicans.“Every single Republican in Washington voted against patients, against families and against taxpayers,” she said. “In the Senate, Republican politicians voted to limit how much Americans can save on prescription drugs and to prevent all patients from getting insulin. And House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has vowed that next term it’s his priority to return Big Pharma its unchecked power to charge patients whatever it wants.”She called that a “slap in the face” to the Californians she represents.Republicans sought to portray the president’s efforts to bolster candidates’ prospects as in vain. “Joe Biden is the last person Democrat candidates want to see on the campaign trail,” Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said after the event, noting reports that Democrats recently shifted money away from some California districts to candidates need help more.“His policies are so unpopular House Democrats are being forced to abandon spending in California districts he won by double-digits,” Mr. McAdams said.Friday evening, Mr. Biden was scheduled to fly to Portland, Ore., a liberal community where the Democratic Party would not normally need the help of the sitting president. But Mr. Biden is hoping to help boost the fortunes of Tina Kotek, the Democratic candidate for governor.Although the state has not elected a Republican leader in decades, polls suggest that Ms. Kotek is in a tight, three-way race with Christine Drazan, the Republican candidate, and Betsy Johnson, a former Democrat who is being financed by Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike. The White House is hoping that a visit by Mr. Biden will help underscore the party’s commitment to her.Republicans predicted that the president’s trip will not prevent their party from grabbing the top electoral prize in the state.“Joe Biden’s disastrous policies continue to hurt Oregon families, and there has been no bigger fan of his out-of-touch approach,” said Kaitlin Price, a spokeswoman for the Republican Governors Association, citing Ms. Kotek, Ms. Johnson and Kate Brown, the state’s current Democratic governor.“This last-ditch effort from national Democrats is proof of their hysteria as they watch Christine Drazan take hold of once deep-blue Oregon that is desperate for change,” Ms. Price said. More

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    When Heat Waves, Wildfires and Drought Grip Oregon and Washington

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    In early summer, a day laborer laying irrigation lines at a plant nursery just south of Portland, Ore., collapsed to the ground and died. His official cause of death was declared “heat related.”It was 104 degrees out — several days into a brutal heat wave whose like has become increasingly commonplace in many parts of the country. Mussels and clams baked in their shells along the Washington coast. Record temperatures and fierce winds fueled one of the largest wildfires in the United States.Drought, megafires and heat waves are descending on the Pacific Northwest as the effects of climate change alter the landscape. They have forced farm owners, fieldworkers and state regulators to navigate newly extreme conditions.But visits to several farms in the Rogue Valley in Oregon and in Southern Washington over the last month showed that the response can often feel improvised, and at times inadequate.Workers during the watermelon harvest last month in Sunnyside, Wash.A tractor hauling freshly harvested watermelons passes the only form of shade on this farm in Sunnyside.A farmworker in Phoenix, Ore., took a break on Monday.Policymakers in Oregon and Washington have recently established safety regulations to protect workers. Just after the punishing heat wave in June, Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon directed the state’s Occupational Health and Safety agency to adopt emergency rules for any workplace where conditions could lead to heat illness.The rules, which took effect Aug. 9, require employers to provide access to shade and cool drinking water in farms and other outdoor places when temperatures reach 80 degrees, with additional requirements to offer more breaks and periodic wellness checks when it reaches 90 degrees.The rules also require employers that provide temporary housing to field workers, like those with H-2A agricultural visas, to keep rooms at 78 degrees or below. Washington State this year created similar emergency rules to manage extreme weather patterns, joining Minnesota and California, which have also imposed heat safety regulations that apply to farms in recent years.The new protections on the ground in the Northwest can look thrown together: plastic benches roasting in the sun, pop-up tents for shade, drinks laid out in kiddie pools.An apple-picking crew during lunch in Sunnyside, Wash., last month.Volunteers with the United Farm Workers union preparing drinks to hand out last month.Farms have also begun shifts that run at odd hours or overnight to battle the heat.During the 2-6 a.m. shift on a pear orchard in Zillah, Wash.Picking pears at night in Zillah to fight the heat.The Oregon Farm Bureau, an industry group, has supported the new rules, noting that many of its farmers already carry out safety measures that include access to shade, water and extra breaks on their farms. But the group also said that adopting all of the rules has been challenging because they took effect during the middle of the harvest season.“At some point, there is a breaking point in terms of rules and regulations and natural disasters,” said Anne Marie Moss, a spokeswoman for the group. “We need more federal and state government programs for farms to stay sustainable.”Employees of a farm in Southern Oregon, who asked to not be identified out of fear of retribution by their employer, this week described cramped living conditions in temporary housing that made escaping the outside heat difficult.At one unit, with little protection from the elements, the windows were fully covered to keep the heat and light out. In a 20-square-foot room with six bunk beds stacked in rows, small fans were tied to beds with pieces of cloth.Sheets cover the windows to keep heat and sun out of employee housing on a farm in Southern Oregon.A worker inside the employee housing unit where several bunk beds are crammed into a room.Wildfires have also generated some of the poorest air quality in the country. This week, laborers in Medford worked under 94-degree temperatures with an air quality index of 154 — a level considered to be unhealthy by federal standards.The new emergency rules in Oregon mandate that employers provide masks that block very fine particulate matter to field workers when the air quality index reaches 100.The hazards of air quality and heat are magnified by the continued risk of the coronavirus pandemic. The Medford area has had among the highest growth rates of Covid cases in the United States.N95 masks were handed out to workers in Sunnyside, Wash., last month when the air quality began to deteriorate.One worker on a vineyard in Medford, who asked to be identified only as Beatriz because of her insecure status as a migrant worker from Mexico, said field conditions had become exceptionally harsh recently. She noted that while her employer supplies the workers with water, there is little shade for taking cover during her 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. shifts.The heat and wildfire smoke worry her, but not because of health concerns. Beatriz, 38, like many others, is paid by what she can pick. “The grape goes to waste with the smoke,” she said. “It affects our pay also, because we don’t get paid for bad grapes.”Blueberries scorched by high temperatures in Albany, Ore.Some farm owners have questioned whether they should be in business at all. Instead of picking pears, people this week at Meyer Orchards in Medford were cutting down trees, dismantling a farm that had been operating for over a century.Oregon, like much of the West, is gripped by drought. Large parts of the state have exceptionally low levels of water, according to the United States Drought Monitor, including the river valley where the Meyer orchard sits. The outlook is not promising either, according to forecasters.Workers at Meyer Orchards chopping down pear trees.“There has never been a drought this severe,” said Kurt Meyer, who is the fourth generation to run the orchard. “After 111 years, we didn’t have much of a choice. You can’t farm without water.”The orchard is 115 acres, and Mr. Meyer estimates that it costs up to $350,000 a year to grow the fruit. This year, he said, there’s no return on that money.“The industry will have to go to where there’s water,” Mr. Meyer said. “I don’t see the Rogue Valley being a big farming community anymore.”Empty crates for picking apples line an orchard field and back road during a morning harvest shift in Sunnyside. More

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    A Long, Lonesome Look at America

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    Twilight falls over a county road in Crook, Colorado.Flags billow along an empty sidewalk in Martin, Tennessee.In Detroit, Oregon, the wreckage from a wildfire sits beneath burned-out hills.These photographs were taken on a 10,000-mile road trip across the United States.They reflect our country’s beauty, loss, confusion, hope, division, grace and grandeur.They’re scenes of an America cloaked in solitude — and of a country on edge.Supported byContinue reading the main storyThe World Through a LensA Long, Lonesome Look at AmericaJan. 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETI was only a few days into a meandering trip across America, and already I was easing into something of a nighttime routine. Earlier in the day I’d pinpointed a promising campsite in Ozark National Forest. Now, I found myself ascending an isolated forestry road to get to it, my tires crackling over its rough, potholed surface.When I could no longer hear the road noise from the scenic highway that carried me into the mountains, I found a small clearing in the woods, shimmied my car into a level position and climbed into the back. Gathering my camping stove, I stepped outside into a light rainfall and, under a tall canopy of trees, lit the burner.All night I’d been enveloped in a thick foggy haze: not much to see, wipers running full tilt. I hadn’t interacted with anyone in days, and now even the landscape was hidden from view. But the rain seemed to be letting up — enough in this small glade, at least, for me to heat a pot of water for a solitary cup of tea. In the morning, I thought, if things cleared, there’d even be hope of seeing the surrounding mountains in their autumnal glory.Lichens on the rock reflect the turning of the leaves at Sam’s Throne, in Ozark National Forest.So it went, it seems, with much of 2020: our lives — and our country — enveloped in a haze of uncertainty, without our knowing whether the next day would bring a modicum of relief or a deepening of our solitude.Cattle in a field near Encino, N.M.Flocks of geese head west over Nebraska.In October I set off on a trip to witness and document this singular moment in American history — to look quietly and intently at our country, to parse its scenery.A polka-dotted awning on a vacant street in Glenwood, Ark.A boarded-up building in Carter, Wyo.The Rio Grande near Taos, N.M.To limit interaction and prevent exposure, I outfitted my car as a makeshift camper van, removing the rear seats and installing a sleeping (and living and working) platform in their place.After stocking up on food and water, I headed southwest from my hometown, Hudson, Ohio, largely avoiding highways and preferring instead to pass more slowly through less populated areas. Most nights I spent at remote, unimproved campsites — away from any developed campgrounds — in our sprawling network of national forests.The fringes of Kootenai National Forest, in northwest Montana.A barn near Libby, Mont.On many of my previous trips across the country, my spirits have been buoyed by the fleeting social interactions that occur sporadically throughout the day — at diners, motels, knickknack shops, campgrounds.Traveling in isolation, though, was a categorically different experience.Even in the casual places where travelers still gathered — gas stations, coffee shops, rest areas — there were generally no offhand conversations, no sharing of experiences, no sense of spontaneous connection. Strangers transacted and, still strangers, went their separate ways.A service station in Dale, Ore.Without the promise of social interaction, the landscape itself — both natural and built — became my focus.Often it felt like a companion. Often it felt like a manuscript, open to interpretation.Early morning light illuminates the Guadalupe Mountains, east of El Paso.A pair of deer in McKittrick Canyon.Wintry colors in Prineville, Ore.Reviewing the photographs from my trip, I found that my eyes were drawn to projections of my own isolation: lone structures, unpeopled scenes, solitary sets of tire tracks.The Fox Community Church in Grant County, Ore.A Forest Service road near Sisters, Ore.A vacant strip mall in northwest Tennessee.Looking outward, I saw within.An aptly named business in Ronan, Mont.Silhouettes against the night sky in Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, in central Idaho.What also struck me were the scars. In town after town I saw sidewalks emptied, shops struggling, restaurants barely clinging to life.It all added up to the same bleak assessment: The pandemic has acted like an accelerant, hastening trends toward online commerce that threaten the future of brick-and-mortar stores and streetside businesses — the economic and communal mainstays of small towns throughout America.A café in Ojo Caliente, N.M.A service station in Vaughn, N.M.The economic fallout wasn’t the only visible trauma. In Colorado, Oregon and California, the widespread effects of the worst fire season on record were ubiquitous.Heading west from Fort Collins, Colo., along State Highway 14, I watched as crews scrambled to battle the Cameron Peak fire, the largest in Colorado history. The devastation along Highway 22 in Oregon was astonishing.Handmade signs along State Highway 14 in northern Colorado.A scorched tree trunk in Willamette National Forest.The charred remains of a home in Detroit, Ore.Our country’s political divisions were also omnipresent — in the form of yard signs, flags, billboards.In some places, the public posturing read like communal declarations. More than at other points in recent memory, businesses (as opposed solely to individuals or residences) seemed to trumpet their political affiliations.A politicized marquee on a theater on North Main Street in Springhill, La.A billboard in Carlsbad, N.M.A sign outside a farm in Bossier Parish, La.A roadside stand offering political merchandise in Medina, Tenn.There was, of course, an endless array of beauty. Gazing at the sandstone arches in eastern Utah, standing silently over the pristine waters of the McDonald Creek in northern Montana, looking out at a herd of bison in Southern Colorado, I saw the sublimity and the precariousness of our natural treasures reflected in their own forms.The Corona Arch, near Moab, Utah.McDonald Creek in Glacier National Park.A bison at the Medano-Zapata Ranch, on the eastern edge of Colorado’s San Luis Valley. In the 19th century, American bison were hunted nearly to extinction; fewer than a thousand remained from an estimated population of 30 to 60 million.If much of the American landscape can be read, then much is also continuously rewritten — particularly in our forests, grasslands and wildlife refuges, the arenas for our never-ending attempts to strike a balance between conservation and extraction, between profit and preservation.A U.S. Forest Service sign in Ouachita National Forest.A nearby logging operation.In many ways the trip felt like an extended ode to such places — our national forests in particular.Twelve days and some 4,500 miles in, I woke before dawn in the southern stretches of Bitterroot National Forest, near the border between Idaho and Montana. Temperatures outside had fallen into the low 20s; cocooned in my car, I hadn’t noticed. But, cracking the door open, I felt a rush of cold air.I peered out into the darkness.Clear skies above Bitterroot National Forest.Startled by the cold and beckoned by the Montanan scenery, I opted for an early start, descending the mountains north toward Missoula. I fell into an early-morning trance — until, 20 minutes later, I saw a fellow traveler who’d pulled his car to the side of the road and exited it. He was staring into the distance.I turned to my left, in the direction of his gaze, and saw Trapper Peak, purple and majestic, dressed in unspeakable beauty. Somehow, inexplicably, I hadn’t noticed its grandeur.I pressed the brakes and slowed to a stop some 100 feet away. I, too, exited my car and stood alongside the road.Together in solitude, we took in the scene.Pastel skies at sunrise over Trapper Peak, in the Bitterroot Mountains.Stephen Hiltner is an editor on The New York Times’s Travel desk, where he edits the weekly World Through a Lens column. You can follow his work on Instagram and Twitter.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More