April 25, 1968
Being happily old-fashioned and with a mind that comes readily unstuck from the world’s woes, and focuses easily on its delights, has distinct advantages which, seasoned with a generous pinch of imagination, can make life seem pretty exciting and worthwhile even when helza-poppin all over the globe.
I’m constantly discovering strange and remarkable things in my little world that keep me in a state of delightful wonder, things that to a newer generation seem commonplace. Not having had the advantage of viewing the world from a point in time that made it appear far different than it does today, they can’t appreciate the points of comparison that so stimulate the interest of those of an earlier generation when they observe the modern wonders on every hand today.
To most people nowadays, especially the younger ones, such an apparently simple phenomenon as a small logging operation would hardly inspire the lifting of an eyebrow. But to me – well, here’s an example of what’s always happening to arouse my intense interest:
Across the canyon from my cabin, on the side of Crazy Ridge, a small outfit is busy logging out the “bug kill” in an area of dead or dying timber that has been infested with destructive insects and is being cleaned out of the otherwise healthy forest by the Forest Service, much as a surgeon removes a dangerous lesion from a human body.
For several days I’ve been listening to the machinery in operation over there, and trying to read the messages of the tootling “donkey” whistle, which, in effect is the voice of the woods crew giving instructions to the donkey puncher, the man who runs the powerful machine that hauls in the logs to the landing.
In the early days of logging, the old ground-logging days when the tall, heavy-sleddedsteam donkeys had just supplanted the ox-teams, I began my logging experience as a whistle-punk. I’d sit on a stump with my hands in readiness on steel wire that was stretched between the donkey and the area from which the crew were sending in the logs. I’d relay the shouted signals from the woods’ end to the engineer by jerking the proper number of times on the wire, each jerk operating a steam whistle at the donkey that the engineer couldn’t fail to hear above the roar and clank of the heavy equipment.
Some of the whistle signals I heard from across the canyon sounded strange to me and finally, being able to stand it no longer, I hiked across and up the ridge to see what was going on. I found that the sound of the whistle was the only resemblance of this modem logging outfit to the ones of the early days. The donkey is a diesel, and of course the cumbersome wooden sled is only a memory to the older hands – most modern woods machinery runs on steel caterpillar tracks.
Beside the donkey is a mechanical marvel that resembles some prehistoric monster. With its long neck and steel jaws it reaches around and snatches up a heavy log bodily and places it on the waiting log truck in a matter of seconds. In minutes (or so it seemed to me) the truck was loaded and ready to head for the mill – shades of Paul Bunyan!
The entire crew over there consists of only 5 men: the “monster” operator, the engineer, the chaser, the rigging slinger, and the choker setter. The old steam donkey logging crew consisted of at least a dozen men. When I mentioned the “sniper” of the old crews, the young rigging slinger asked me what the blankety-blank the sniper was. He had never heard of that long extinct character who expertly wielded his double-bitted ax to lop off the sharp edge from the front end of the log so it wouldn’t plow or hang up on roots and rocks as it was hauled along over the ground.
This same youngster gave me a real surprise when he showed me how he “blew” the donkey whistle from out in the woods. No stringing of whistle wires for this space-age crew! He carries on his belt a small electronic device that transmits across space to a similar gadget at the donkey that activates the signal whistle.
Having had a first-hand glimpse of Yesterday to compare with Today, there seems to be no end to the interesting discoveries and surprises that are continually popping up to make life in general a pretty interesting experience.
