Washington Rebel

Falling a Giant Cedar

At one time Breakfast Creek, on the North Fork of the Clearwater River, in North Central Idaho had one of the largest stands of White Pine in the world. Blister Rust devastated the entire stand during the 1970's. Salvage crews logged all the pine that they could, leaving everything else unless it was in the way. The residual trees left were mostly Western Red Cedar and Grand Fir, both of which reseeded the scarified ground. Our job was to log this ground using a high lead skidding operation, with the intent to do the least amount of damage to any little trees. The road going into this site had its direction altered in order to avoid the giant cedar. No one had wanted to fall this tree.

The top had broken out at some time in the distant past, leaving three limbs to compete against each other to be the leader and each one had grown as large as any tree around them, eventually grafting themselves to the main trunk, adding even more girth. The main trunk had woodpecker holes that had healed over, evidence that the ants had chewed up all the solid wood within, vacating their premise a long time ago. The frost seams had split open, each top leaned hard in its own direction. Gravity was winning. this was one mean tree and we were going to fall it.
My partner Scott and I were gypo sawyers that were paid according to our production totals. We worked without influence or interference, sharing a ride and supported each other when we needed help, while working separately, we each brought up a strip a safe distance apart from each other. When fatigue overwhelmed us, we would hike up the hill, stopping at the cedar, quietly assessing the trees strength and weaknesses, either one could get us hurt or worse. We had a reputation for handling mean trees, it didn't make it any easier. We decided to climb up take each top down individually.

Curiosity got the best of us, we had to know how big it was so we ran a tape around it and found it was 16 ft. across at the bole. Not much smaller than the largest cedar east of the cascades.
That cedar was only a few miles west of Breakfast Creek.

We used a ladder to reach the crotch and to have a place to stand so we could cut some notches for the springboards. The crotch was 16 ft. to the ground and some of the springboards were set a little higher. Wrapping a logging chain around the butt of the top in case the top barber chaired sounded like a good idea, then we were ready. Using a big Stihl chainsaw with a 50 in. bar, taking turns making each cut, ( that saw was heavy) falling the smallest top first, it was 50 inches. Eventually the other two were fell, both were 60 inches across. All of this took a little more than a day to complete. We had our adenaline fix for the day and we were paid very well, yes indeed.

Apocalypse Maybe

The Outer Limits - Original _ The Man Who Was Never Born (1963)

At lunch today we discussed possible outcomes of what is going on right now.  I'm the most apocalyptic of the bunch.  It runs something like this: our politicians are the same kind of critter that ran things in the 20s and 30s.  In addition to ordinary human blindness -- which we all suffer without abatement -- the dynamics that operate without hindrance are greed, lust for power, egotism, weakness, stupidity, and so on.  Those dynamics are the body and the antibody, the proton and the neutron, of political structures.  In other words, if constructive action could be taken to, say, rescue the dollar from collapse, our politicians would be explaining those things to us and laying out options for us to choose from.  Instead, our politicians make promises that can't be kept and assume, I guess, that as long as we voters like to play Bitch to their Bubba, all is well.  Apply this calculus to a darker vision, as Vanderleun did in this Afghanistan post, and you get the Ritalin version of history.  That is why I'm apocalyptic.  Systems have to be destroyed.  We're going into a death phase with a chorus of fools singing a sociopath's praises.  I'd call that the equivalent of a bird going to a cat fight.

Nuclear weapons?  Stephen King visions?  Why not?  What I had in mind, though, was more along the lines of what was posted here: Getting Ready.

I'll be more candid with you.  You can make fun of me if you wish.  I feel in my bones that our own government will be putting people in jail in my lifetime -- for political reaons.  Paranoid?  Rationally, I have to say yes, it's paranoid.  Still, I feel what I feel: there's a plan in place to literally, at an instinctive level, break the American spine.  I believe the people dominating this country from behind the scenes are slave masters.  To the extent a strong America impedes that play, some of us will be broken.  I believe this.  You can make fun of me 10 years from now, if I'm alive, and wrong.

Our friend Fuchs sent along this link: The Doomer Case.  I guess Fuchs and I wouldn't make such good company for Tea.  We're Doomers.

Supersecret Blogolastic Retreat

Irish Cicero and Hoh River Boy Taking Cover at a Chinese Restaurant in the Seattle Area.  (Note the KIA Conservative federal employee in the foreground)

Will be meeting up with Blogger Loggers tomorrow in Seattle.  We have nothing to lose but our waists.

I'll report sometime tomorrow.  Expect a temporary slowdown in production while we move toward our destinations under supersecret protocols!

Obama Operative Offers Refreshment

Loggin' Bloggin'

Forks High School Gradjeeate (Class of '74) Kent T. sent me these pics with the following description:

"Dale and Deryl Huling hauling logs through downtown Forks. Two cuts from the same tree. One was 10,000 bf; the other 14,000 bf. There was a third log from the same tree bringing the total from the one tree to 35,000 bf. Likely logged by Brager Bros. Logging since they did all the logging for the Forks Shingle Co."

I was so intrigued by these specimens that I wrote Kent back immediately and asked for more details, whereupon I received the following:

"The pictures were taken about 1937-1940. The 'Associated' building in the background was located where the Rain Drop Cafe is now. The single family home behind the truck in the picture under the 'associated' picture in Oscar Walgren's home that was located where the library is now. Dale and Deryl Huling are my mother's brothers. After the war, they moved to Seattle and opened Huling Bros Chrysler Plymouth and later Huling Bros Buick in West Seattle. The two brothers married the two Hunley sisters from Forks (Ruth and Mae) in a dual ceremony in Forks around that same time.

"The Forks Shingle Co was owned by the Old Huling Brothers (Roy, Hot Water Harry, Les. Everett, and Francis). The mill was located between the Bogachiel Bridge and the Rain Forest Road where Grahams later set up shop in the 70's. The original mill burned down twice, once around 1941 and the last time in the late 60's or early 70's. The original mill was all run off steam including the generation of electricity for the family homes (thus the nick name 'Hot Water Harry' for the oldest of the brothers who did all the design work) They got in the shingle business in Raymond in the 1920's through the marriage of one of their sisters to Elmer Case who opened one of the first shingle mills in the state (or so I'm told) in the Raymond area (The Case Shingle Co).   Anything else?"

No, Kent, that'll about do it.  The mill he mentions belonging to the Huling boys is where we were dropped off by the school bus and picked up by my mother, who rode us the rest of the 23 miles or so home to the ranger station.

Good times!

The Huling brothers are the type of human Kent and I grew up around -- ingenious, resourceful, proud, and tough.  That was our America.

I liked -- and trusted -- that one better than this one.

Thanks, Kent.