One timber of a conspiracy

I'M NOT SURE what this says about the state of our economy, but some of the wealthiest, most powerful and intermittently sober men in the world are preparing to sell redwoods in an effort to make ends meet.

Well, that's not the official version of events. Not exactly. But when I tell you more about these folks, I trust you'll be as suspicious of the official version of events as I am.

The men in question are members of the Bohemian Club, a secretive society that holds a very special "camp" every July in a sprawling grove of 1,000-year-old redwoods about 75 miles north of San Francisco.

According to The Washington Post, the three-week event "begins with a nocturnal ceremony featuring torches, incantations, hooded robes of red velvet and the incineration of a coffin beneath a massive sculpture of an owl." A 40-foot-tall owl. It represents "Knowledge."

Sounds like your typical Tupperware party so far, right? Or Amway maybe?

The club was founded in the late 1800s by newspapermen and other writers whose chief ritual - I'm guessing - involved passing a bottle.

Jack London, Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce are among those who reportedly frolicked in the woods in the early days, but the membership was later broadened to include financial barons, who brought solvency, top-shelf booze and - again, I'm guessing - the hooded robes of red velvet.

Over the years, the guest list has grown to include princes, presidents and potentates of various nations and mega-corporations. Among the luminaries, past and present: Herbert Hoover, George W. Bush, David Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich.

As it happens, I've been an amateur scholar of the Bohemian Club since my college days, waaay back in the Reagan administration.

I briefly contemplated applying for a federal grant to study the parallels between a college keg party and a gathering of the world's elite, but I decided against it. I figured if I learned too much, they'd have to kill me or, worse, force me to converse with then-Interior Secretary James Watt at length about Reagan's revelation that if you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.

Among conspiracy theorists, the Bohemian Club ranks right up there with the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Freemasons and Yale's Skulls and Bones as the Super Wal-Mart of world evil. All manner of skulduggery allegedly occurs in the redwood grove, including human sacrifices, real estate transactions, nekkidness and rigging the stock market.

But Peter Phillips, a sociologist at nearby Sonoma State University who's infiltrated the camp, says the club is more silly than sinister. "It's a place they can go and see the same guys and talk about their prostates and talk about their wives and whatever," he told The Post.

Apparently, the conversation in recent years also has been about cutting down trees.

The club has applied to the state of California to log as much as 1 million board feet from the grove every year, according to The Post.

The club president, Jay Mancini, contends the logging is actually part of a forest-management plan.

The idea, he says, is to sell Douglas fir and other non-redwoods on the club's 2,700 acres, then use the proceeds to hire folks to clear undergrowth that could start a fire.

So, it's sort of like a bake sale for the Glee Club, but with timber. Against all odds, it appears the Bohemians have fallen on hard times and need some quick cash to save the trees.

As I said, I'm skeptical. But I'm trying to be open-minded. If I should someday see President Bush or Newt Gingrich standing on a street corner selling redwood toothpicks, I'll do my part and fish a few coins from my pocket. I hope I can count on you to do the same.

Daryl Lease is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. Reach him at (757) 446-2441 or daryl.lease@pilotonline.com.