Learning to Log

It fell a wet, heavy snow, not the lightweight flakes we all love, but little balls of white slush that turn to water when they land on my jacket and crush down underfoot and undertire, so walking and driving is like moving through pea soup.  But I’m getting used to it, having walked several miles along roads, along trails and where there is no trail, among the trees. 

The ones who suffer most from this kind of snow are the trees, whose branches weigh down under a sticky, heavy mixture of water and ice.  Their branches break and they fall, often across power lines.  So it was that the power was off in most of Oakridge after the Monday-night storm, and about half of the town is still powerless.  With more wet snow expected tonight, it’s hard to predict tomorrow’s activities.

The Trailhead Café opened two hours late this morning because Rebecca, the owner, had to deal with a two-hour delay in school for her children.  She runs the café by herself and moves faster than any waitress/cook I’ve ever seen.  A couple of ex-loggers and I talked while she fixed our breakfasts.  Then after eating, the loggers got out their guitars and another joined when he was not on the internet.  The men had nothing in particular to do today and they answered my questions quite happily.  The Hines Lumber Company used to hire some five hundred men, but now there’s not a trace, says an ex-choker-setter, turned guitar player.  The fallers were paid by their own log scale back then and sometimes they’d put down forty inches when the log measured only thirty in diameter.  Can’t blame them, he said, it’s dangerous work.  One time he watched a faller size up a dogleg tree, the kind that have a crook in the trunk and don’t go up straight.  He must have misjudged its lean, since it fell back on his saw instead of going with the undercut.  Anyway, it twisted back on him, and was all she wrote.

Rivulets of cold water run in tire tracks as I leave the Trailhead Café, walking to the museum.  Above me, the steep timberlands that the loggers said still keep them here in Oakridge.  These are friendly men and unemployed, trying to make do with what’s left.  On the breath of at least one of them the smell of alcohol at nine in the morning.

The museum was closed, and a little sign on the door gave a number to call for a visit.  A man answered, and I expressed interest in the logging and sawmill industry as it was before the end.  He said he’d be right there.

Del Spencer could not have been more helpful.  He talked for an hour from personal experience, showing pictures and documents and logging memorabilia.  Then his cell phone rang and said he had to go fix a broken water pipe, but I was welcome to stay and go through the files.  If he should not return, here is how to lock the door, he said.  And this from a man I had never had any contact with before today.

Del runs the museum by himself without any funding.  He says that the Oakridge past is worth preserving.  I opened file after file, looked at pictures and read stories of huge logs, boisterous loggers, and thriving sawmills.  Del returned an hour later.  I could have had his irreplaceable artifacts in my backpack, but he showed no concern.  During my stay here I hope to relate what I learned at the museum to the lives of people I will meet and country I will see.  I know that I can call Del if I need help.

Loggers in an old museum photo look like the men in the TrailHead Cafe today

As I write this, more snow is falling, but it’s the light, slow-falling kind, the way snow should be.

 







Western Red Cedars, young and old














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