An overwhelming terror engulfed Willow Kasner. In 2023, the state of Oregon threatened to douse her beloved home, the sprawling Siuslaw National Forest, with the toxic herbicide 2,4-D. She had a PTSD attack, broke down and cried, reliving the desolating pain her tight-knit coastal community had suffered decades ago. “I thought this was done,” Kasner said.

Growing up among the towering old-growth trees of the Coast Range, Kasner became tautly bound to her curious surroundings. Every day, she investigated the South Beaver Creek Valley, uncovering endless moss-covered secrets while biking through untraveled gravel roads. Cool, moist winters blanketed her property in impenetrable fog, barely concealed from the harsh coastal winds battering nearby Seal Rock.

Months of endless rain cultivated a dense city of green ferns, soggy brown bark and roaring blue rivers abundant with wildlife. When the sun did come out, fighting through the salty marine layer overlaying a thick pine canopy, its glowing rays illuminated the lush forest floor. It was heaven on earth — a young adventurer’s paradise. Although she hadn’t seen the world yet, she knew this place was special.

During early childhood in the 1970s, industrial intervention shell-shocked her quaint Western Oregon community. Without warning, the U.S. Air Force unloaded an undisclosed quantity of Agent Orange across 350 acres of nearby timberland, infecting roads, streams and power lines in its path. Seemingly unconcerned by ramifications, their haphazard means of vegetation control developed into a damning chemical attack.

As time went on, matters would only intensify. Agent Orange had rooted its tendrils deep in the environment, harboring lethal, enduring consequences for locals.

“We had 13 miscarriages between neighborhood moms,” Kasner said. “One of our good friends, Melissa, died of three different kinds of cancer.”

Still a small child, Kasner witnessed the traumatizing power of unchecked authority. Families she had grown up with, attended school with and loved had been permanently disrupted by industrial negligence.

With a frighteningly similar ordeal looming over the forest’s future, there was no way she would let her community suffer again. Now a tenacious environmentalist and artistic activist, Kasner fights to protect her community from the same toxic threats that scarred her childhood.

Kasner was born in Lincoln City and raised where the forest meets the sea: the dainty town of Waldport. As a sixth-generation Oregonian, her Pacific Northwest roots run ocean-deep, descending from loggers and farmers on both sides.

But she would quickly distance herself from her family’s resource extraction roots, instead following in the footsteps of her rebellious, environmentally-conscious mother. “She taught me how to love and live off the land,” Kasner said. “We recycled heavily, didn’t use plastics and only ate food from our property.”

Her health-oriented, alternative lifestyle established a young freedom to explore and a budding courage to defy. The Siuslaw became a vast childhood playground chock-full of curiosity and discovery. From the smallest ant to the tallest tree, the area’s health was just as critical as her own.

A flourishing love for the arts occupied the other half of her balanced upbringing. Beginning at age five, Kasner danced at the local studio and became involved in the theater community. She frequently attended her father’s live performances, who was an avid musician. “I grew up on stage,” Kasner said.“I got all that creativity from my dad.”

At 16, while attending Waldport’s tiny, 200-student high school, Kasner decided she wanted to join a “Youth for Peace” group. One small problem: Waldport didn’t have one. So, she formed her own. Early talking points included Nelson Mandela and banning South African Apartheid — everything she could do to immerse students in activism.

“A lot of people in our rural community didn’t seem to look outside their windows,” Kasner said. “I was trying to get people excited about what’s really going on in the world.”

Fellow Waldport sophomore Stephanie Alvidrez was instantly enamored by Kasner’s sheer individuality and appreciated her persistent drive to educate their shut-in community. Drifting in and out of each other’s lives ever since their initial classroom encounter, the two share an unbreakable bond built on shared values and common origins.

“She’s my tribal sister,” Alvidrez said. “We’re just like family.”

Even operating on a modest scale, Kasner’s early passion project taught her how to approach change. Progress doesn’t generate organically; it requires all gas and no brakes.

“When she finds something that is unjust, that is hurting the masses, she will take action,” Alvidrez said. “She puts 100% effort into whatever she’s doing.”

Though her first pursuit of activism attracted lifelong friends and broadened her secluded community’s recognition of global issues, Kasner understood her outspoken personality deviated far beyond the local norm.

“I was always the weird hippie kid,” Kasner said. “I was voted most likely to join the Peace Corps and go save Africa.”

But you typically have to go to college to join the Peace Corps. Like any other facet of her life, Kasner’s path shined elsewhere. It’s not that she couldn’t go to college; she was a straight-A student and finished third in her class. In reality, she could never convince herself to fill out the monotonous pages of scholarship paperwork, turned away by the tedious application process.

The early workings of her post-grad plan involved taking a year off to travel and get to know the world. One year turned into two; two turned into five. All too quickly, it seemed like she would never return to her humble, coastal beginnings.

Her life became defined by travel and spontaneity. She stayed in-state for a stint, working and living in Portland. It wouldn’t last. She hit the road, eventually settling in Arizona at a hotel restaurant before being unceremoniously fired.

She hopped in her little Honda CR-X with her kitty and cruised to Utah to attend a musical festival. She had nowhere to stay and slept in her car. The Beehive State wasn’t going to work either.

State by state and place by place, Kasner lived the nomad lifestyle in search of a more permanent destination.

Fortunes would shift when she attended a Rainbow Gathering — a temporary forest congregation emphasizing peace, harmony, freedom and respect.

While forming refreshing connections with like-minded hippies, Kasner was exposed to an expansive catalog of social opportunities, including Grateful Dead concerts and art music festivals. Finally, she had landed a lasting space on her meandrous journey: a touring gig at Renaissance fairs nationwide.

For seven years, Kasner rotated around the country with a troupe, performing belly dance, African dance, classical dance and theater with worldly, environmental themes.

Dancing through Texas, she stumbled across a woman named Heather Graham. Today, Graham, too, calls the Siuslaw home. “I fell in love with her that day,” Graham said. “We became fast friends while stuck together on the road.”

After all, it was impossible not to be transfixed by Kasner’s magnetic energy. Despite roaming through different social groups and iterations of life during much of her young adulthood, she consistently harnessed a widespread hub of people. “She is a free spirit, whirlwind of a person,” Graham said. “Everyone I’ve ever known just kind of fell in love with her.”

All of a sudden, seismic discoveries and life-changing tragedy flipped her world upside down.

Every year, she returned home to visit her grandparents. One year, her grandfather informed her he was planning to sell the family property. “No, no, no,” Kasner said.

He refused, scolding her and her “hippie” friends for trying to change the laws. “They’re going to make it so I can’t log up to the creek anymore,” he said. “I wasn’t planning to, but I’m going to now before they tell me I can’t.”

While incessantly pleading with her grandfather to keep the property and refrain from logging, Kasner informed him about global deforestation issues. “We have to stop destroying the forests,” Kasner said. “Or else the world is going to fall down.”

He didn’t budge and sold the property. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “I can’t see it; I don’t believe it.”

Dumbfounded, Kasner’s purpose in America had come to a standstill. The fight seemed impossible. She realized she didn’t have to come back. “Everything I knew was gone,” Kasner said.

Without hesitation, she took everything she knew and flew to South America with her troupe. Little did she know, her plane ticket was a year-long open ticket. She set no return date. It was time to start anew.

Settling on the coast of Ecuador, Kasner got up to just about everything. She found a partner and had a baby. Together, they owned a tattoo studio and a surf shop. Later down the line, she opened up her own “hippie” food restaurant called California Mama, while additionally teaching fire dancing and English to locals. For a total of seven years, Kasner built an enriching life for herself over 4,000 miles away from her beloved Siuslaw Forest.

In 2008, Kasner returned home to reclaim her family property. This time, she had her daughter to share it with. Nature had consumed the home, which was camouflaged head to toe in blackberry brambles. She had to carve out the yard, mend the porch and uncover the fruit trees, tirelessly fixing everything that would restore it to its original form.

It was back to business — back to the fight. Kasner invested time in a smattering of campaigns, including a “no nukes” initiative in Washington, D.C. She stopped eating industrialized meat and taught folks how to manage their health without buying into aggressive consumerism. Small or large, it didn’t matter the scale; Kasner jumped on every opportunity she could muster.

Cut to Aug. 3, 2023, when she received a nightmarish call. Once again, the government threatened to release an aerial spray of 2,4-D in and around her area. She had to stop them, and she had to spread the word.

Day and night for three weeks, Kasner rallied the public, generating over 2000 signatures on a petition sent to Governor Tina Kotek. She held several meetings with county commissioners, local citizens and miscellaneous concerned parties. “We sent 250 public comments to the Oregon Department of Forestry,” Kasner said. “They only had 10 in total up to that point.”

With the entire community on board, plans for aerial spray ceased. Kasner’s efforts did not.

She had studied everything humanly possible about forestry, including who decides the law and what information is shared with the public. She hollowed a rabbit hole deep enough to illuminate a foreseeable path. The cause was too intense and meaningful to abandon, with a never-ending inventory of new insights to learn.

“It’s like a blackberry root,” Kasner said. “You can pull it out, but there’s always a little left. It will just regrow.”

Ever since she was a child dancing on stage, Kasner has understood the healing power of art. Utilizing her creative background, she set off on her most important artistic endeavor to date: an Oregon-set experimental short film exposing profit-driven acts of destruction and outdated forms of forest restoration. Titled “Poisoning,” the film screened at the Poetic Lens International Film Festival in Eugene last fall.

“This film came out of necessity,” Kasner said. “Necessity is the mother of invention and creativity.”

After “Poisoning,” Kasner crossed paths with Executive Director of the Coast Range Association Chuck Willer, who has fought against local timber industries for decades. Operating as a nonprofit since 1991, the CRA aims to locate just protections for Western Oregon’s forests while supporting a vibrant rural economy.

As it stands, the Northwest Forest Plan is the only entity protecting the Siuslaw from further disruption. It’s getting amended. In need of a coastal organizer to help uphold the NWFP, Willer offered Kasner a position with CRA as the Siuslaw plan amendment field organizer.

Approaching March 17, the deadline for the amendment, Kasner has been aggressive in organizing public comments and conducting field research.

On Feb. 28, Kasner hosted an event for her new community-based group, the Emerald Curtain Collective, called “Forest Through the Trees,” described as an evening of collaborative artistic activism, education and immersion. The evening was a smashing success, accumulating over $3000 to continue Siuslaw protection projects. The event featured local art, live music, interactive theater performances and mask-making. Going forward, Kasner hopes to assemble a team of contributors to extend the ECC’s artistic outreach and further submerge the community in environmental causes.

“Once you’re in love with something, you fight to protect it,” Kasner said. “So I’m getting the ants together. The small school of fish is tightening up.”

It’s been a winding, bumpy road — a life full of sudden segues, tragedy and resistance. But even if the world refuses to present her with the tranquility and justice she bravely fights for, Kasner will still be on the front lines, protecting and loving it for eternity. As long as the trees of the Siuslaw Forest stand tall, so shall their savior.