Biking or hiking through the Deschutes National Forest near Bend and you can see paint on trees. Sometimes it’s blue. Sometimes it’s orange.

What does it mean? Blue on a tree usually means that tree is going to be cut. “Blue bye-bye” is one way to remember it.

Orange usually means its a boundary of a project or a particular tree is going to be left uncut. Orange means it “orange going to be cut.” OK, that was terrible. Sorry. Stick with blue bye-bye.

The way the forest looks now in many areas, with lots of trees close together and underbrush, is not the way it looked historically. Historically, it was much less dense. And that’s the aim of more projects to get it back to the way it used to be. It makes the forest healthier and can reduce the intensity of a fire. Paint on the trees is not necessarily a reason to worry.