Apollo 14 Moon Tree
                                                                                   Kathy Lombardo

January 1971, Apollo 14 left Kennedy Space Center, headed for the Moon.  On board, in Astronaut Stuart Roosa's personal kit, was a small container of seeds,  from trees of various parts of the USA.  Douglas fir trees represented the Northwest.  The idea was to find whether space flight had any effect on the germination and growth of seeds.  Stuart Roosa had formerly been a smokejumper for the US Forest Service, the first responders to forest fires.  He was based at Cave Junction's Siskiyou Smokejumper Base.  On the return of the seeds, a Forest Service employee, Stan Krugman, was in charge of planting them and rearing the seedlings.  The small trees were ready for planting out by 1975-1976, honoring America's Bicentennial.  Most of the trees went to public places, such as State Capitols and parks.  One Douglas fir came to the Siskiyou Smokejumper Base, south of Cave Junction.  Soon after, the base was closed.  Josephine County took over the site, which became known as the Illinois Valley Airport.

The first Moon Tree Run was in 1979.  Of course, it started near the local Moon Tree.  The Moon Tree run was an annual family event for about twenty years, but while the original smokejumper base building sat in dormancy, the Moon Tree died from neglect.  As talk of restarting the Moon Tree Run circulated in the Valley, I wondered if there was a way to replace the tree with another, but it had to be authentic.  As the Siskiyou Smokejumper Base Museum was becoming a reality, the need for a new Moon Tree became more urgent.  Since I meet my daughter and granddaughters in Roseburg each Christmas break from school, we would go to the mature Moon Tree at the VA Hospital there.  It is in a nice inner park, with a plaque, and no other Douglas fir trees nearby.  I was raised by an arborist and had done some grafting in the past.  It was worth a try.  The lowest limbs are far out of reach, so we had hope for a good wind, and get there before the gardener.  I brought home fresh blown down twigs and grafted any that were still moist onto local Douglas fir root stock in 1-gallon pots, on a warm mat and under a plastic tent.  With stems the size of toothpicks, I had to use a simple diagonal splice, match up the cambium layers as closely as possible, and hope for at least one "take".  We now have a clone.

October 6, 2012, there will be an Apollo 14 Moon Tree Run, at the Illinois Valley Airport; also the Siskiyou Smokejumper Base Museum, about 4 1/2 miles south of Cave Junction.  The new Moon Tree will be planted on that day.  As the event gets closer, more information will be available at Highway199.org.