Beginnings

The woods, where ground sponges underfoot and moss smells of vinegar, woods where an overhead chorus of leaves and needles harmonizes with wind, and the drop of cone or stick sometimes interrupts worshipful stillness.

Such places hypnotized me in high school and drew me to a college degree in forest management.  My first graduate assignment set roots in the fog of Mendocino County, where in Jackson State Forest, near Fort Bragg, I scaled logs by summer and measured redwoods by winter. 

Though I’ve wandered far from those cozy wooded beginnings, big trees still call me.  Beginning on February 15, I will answer my friends and live in their Oakridge, Oregon, homeland for a month.  The town used to ring with logging trucks, sawmill machinery and bar-talk of gyppo loggers.  It must have been like Fort Bragg then, but now reels where logging is dead.

I go in winter because motels are cheap and people are often idle, giving opportunity to learn, dig in a while until March 15, and spend time in the snowy woods.  Thanks for joining.