Photo credits go to my brother
The wilderness stretched before them, silently waiting. Dark
green limbs covered in white. Frozen peat-moss swamps. Rivers providing a
flowing road for the massive trunks. Cold. Survival. Existence. They shouldered
their axes and strode into the wilderness. It was the age of the lumbermen.
That was then. Yet it is still the age of the lumbermen
here. Men dressed in durable Carhartts, full beards to protect their faces from
the frigid cold, heavy winter boots protecting feet. Their breath steams in the cold. Crawling out of warm blankets at 3 in the morning, they begin
their days in the cold, winter dark. Trucks rumble to life, breaking the
stillness. Coffee is poured down throats in order to open eyes. Courage is
gathered for the long day.
The heavy trucks barrel down the highway, then turn onto
packed logging trails. Drivers radio back and forth, things like, “Just
entering logging road. Where are you?” or “Coming up to big corner," hoping to
evade a face-off between two trucks on a narrow road. Bunchers sever at the
base, snow cascading off branches. Limbers snap the twigs and branches.
Skitters bumble their way over stumps and fallen trees, hauling huge loads to
the piles. And the trucks line up to be loaded.
They face the cold. Mornings when it’s -40 F they take an
hour to limber their equipment. If they move in haste, parts snap, and fingers
grow numb as they work over the huge machines in the cold and dark. One wrong
move costs thousands of dollars from a
wood sale.
The wise ones pack guns with them, wary of the silent shadows
flitting through the wilderness. Wolves. Silent, fierce, and brutal.
The heavily loaded trucks transport their cargo, smelling of
green wood and fresh air, to the mill, an expansive blue building filled with
huge machines and more laboring men.
And they work on. Cutting, dragging, hauling, providing the economy of our town. It is the age of the lumbermen.
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