Every plot is a contrast between what was built well versus
what was built cheaply. The hand-split locust posts and the metal ones. The wooden
shack and the tin carport. The old ford tractor and the newer Chinese one. And
there are contrasts as to how the land is used or not used. It is common to see
cattle farms without any cattle. Chicken coops without chickens. Pig pens
without pigs. Dogs dominate properties, prowling the yard, or racing my truck
across their span of territory.
Factories brought people out of the hills, but now the
factories are gone. There is logging. There is coal. There are still some jobs
at manufacturing plants if you can run a CNC machine. There are road
construction jobs, but many of the men are out of work while their wives have
taken the health services jobs that have sprung up around the county. Every
logger that I work with has a wife who works in health services.
There are drugs to fill the malaise. An ambulance driver on whose
property we logged told me that sixty percent of their calls were for overdoses
or people freaking out on meth or bath salts. He said bath salts are the more
popular at the moment. In their state of
unreality, the user calls the ambulance, and when the sheriff show up along
with the ambulance, the user bars the door. Then the sheriff has to try to talk
his way into the house while the medical crew waits…and meanwhile, Uncle Danny
has a heart attack ob the other side of the ridge and can’t get an ambulance
and dies.
I turn up Cave Road, a single lane ice and snow covered
trail that runs up along a creek towards a hollow tucked just under Clinch
Mountain. I logged this patch before Christmas—pulled fifteen butts out that
time. It is north facing and so lays in the shadows of the hills. The road
winds through little homesteads, often splitting them in two as the land
between the hills gets tighter. The shadowy snow covered road continues past one
more white-washed Baptist church and then recklessly towards the steep face of
Clinch.
The land adjacent to the logging site belongs to a rich man
with ten foot wrought Iron gates with his initials BHLwritten in gold
lettering. A cleared asphalt drive winds its way over the hill. He has built a
ten foot fence around his perimeter, some 10 miles to keep his prize within and
the locals out. His prize: a herd of western elk. They say he lives out of state and hardly ever
visits.
The approach to the logging site is a half a mile along a decent
dirt road—at least it’s decent today. The logging site can’t be seen from Cave
Road, but everywhere are the tracks of mud left by the logging trucks. The approach
road changes with the weather conditions and the traffic of logging trucks that
come through. This crew can move nine loads on a good day so as the road is
broken down it has to be rebuilt, usually daily. On bad days the road will have
one foot ruts carved out by the logging trucks. On those days I try to drive
parallel to the ruts hoping that my truck won’t bottom out.
But the road today is good—it had been dozed before the snow
storms and it is frozen and flat like frozen tundra. I use the four wheel drive
and hope a logging truck isn’t coming from the other direction. When it does,
one of us has to back their load the other direction, which is a disaster when
the road is in bad shape.
On one side of the hollow, under the view of Clinch, stands
a pristine snow covered forest, resplendent in ash, poplar, and oak that
combine to create a symmetry of trunks and tops rising to the heavens. On the
other side is clear cut devastation. The snow has fallen here too, but it does
nothing to hide the fact that the hillside is dead. The earth here is turned
over, loose and eroding. It is littered with tops and broken bows that twist
and turn into the chaos. Hardly a sapling is spared.
The road up to the site is easy going and I don’t run into
any problems. I back the trailer into the edge of the truck turnaround where
the loggers park their trucks. One of dozers is on the left side of the ridge
working with Jim and the skidder is making runs between the buck saw and the
dozer.
The other dozer is parked just in front of me. Jumper cables
run from the battery and fall lifelessly into the snow, and on the other side somebody
has pulled a hydraulic line. Three years ago when I started with this crew the
dozers were new and yellow. But three years working for a high volume crew has
left them battered, sides dented in, cages beaten, paint dulled or missing.
It can be hard to find a logger who is working consistently.
Many smaller outfits do grading work or deliver gravel. Some do tree work. A
small logger will try to keep a patch of timber for the days he is between
work. On the phone a stalling logger says they are waiting for the patch to dry
out. And by the time it does dry out it usually rains. “This weather’s been
something else. Washed out my road. We’ll get back in there when it dries some.
Call again.”
But the Stack outfit always works. It is why I work with
them. Other crews stop when the weather is too cold or even if it is too hot.
This crew works. If they don’t work they don’t get paid, and then the bossman
can’t pay the note on the skidders and the dozers.
I am pulling on my boots and chaps when the skidder pulls up
and out jumps Jonny. Jonny is back! I
had heard he had been fired stealing the seat off an old plough. Didn’t
recognize Jonny at first, He dressed in winter olive green coveralls and wore an
army surplus helmet liner, like a tank driver.
He is tall and tan, wears a black mustache and is lean and fit for 55.
He is someone I really trust out there. I know if the crew takes off early and
I’m working on the other side of the ridge that Jonny will come find me. He
knows I’m trying to get home to my family. He’ll skid my butts out and run the
knuckle boom to help me load the trailer and then drive out after me to make
sure I get on the road alright. If I am working the next day as well he brings
me a coffee and a sausage biscuit. At lunch he whittles with a small folding
knife. He isn’t really making anything. Just whittles the stick down to nothing
and then finds another to work through. He likes whittling the different
species, examining what he sees inside, comparing them like an anatomist.
“You sure know how to pic the days don’t ya?” he laughs.
“I log when wife tells me I can log.” We smile and I shake
his hand. “I’m glad you’re back Jonny.”
“Me too. You don’t realize how good a job is until its gone.”
He looks down at the ground and shuffles his feet. After another minute he finally
looks at me and asks if I need I ride up to the other boys. No I say, I’m
headed to the right side of the ridge to go after some of the ash we left in
the woods. “It’s good to see you Jonny,” I say. “I’m really glad you’re back on.”
He sets off the other way in the skidder and I gear up. I
wear an orange North Face jacket. I always do if it is cold enough. It is quite a contrast
with the Carhart ones everyone else wears, but I have another reason for
wearing it. I'm trying to not get shot. Sometimes I will go to a site before it is logged to scout out the ash. Sometimes I am the first there, or sometimes there is a dozer and
cutter building roads and a staging area for the buck saw and logs. I’ll
hike up in the boundaries of the land always a little worried about getting
shot. It is unnerving walking under hunters stands. I have seen hunters on adjacent
boundaries, and even had a landowner take a shot just over my shoulder while I
was clearing out the dirt around an ash tree. When I cut I wear an orange
logging helmet and chaps. I wear gloves as I am often adjusting hot saws and
stringing winch cables around trees. I’ve had stray twines winch cables puncture
my hands enough to know better.
I am cold. Have to go out cold knowing you’ll warm up when
you get working. If you don’t start out a little bit cold you probably aren’t
doing it right. There are deer foraging
in the fields between the side of devastation and the side that is untouched.
They are no longer scared of the dozers and the chainsaws.
I often get a ride up the hill on the side of a dozer or on
the side of the skidder, the wheels churning below my feet. But today I am
hunting butts that were left in the devastation. Butts that I had to leave behind
a month earlier when I hauled out fifteen from these woods—when they were still
woods. I head up the hollow. I have a can of gas and a can of bar oil through
the handle of my mattock, the handle end in my armpit, my hand supporting the
middle. I carry my saw on my shoulder--they say you should never do this as you
could slip and the teeth could cut your carotid artery and you would bleed to
death. I have heard of loggers dying this way. Today it doesn’t matter though as
I am wearing a thick collar. On hot days
I try not to carry it this way, but sometimes, if I am alone and tired I’ll do
it, ever aware of the risk that I am taking.
The hill is steep, and I make measured steps and settle into
a rhythm up the side. My heart rate is up, I’m warmer, and I’m climbing at a
good clip. I find a good place to leave my gas and oil, somewhere central to
the work that I am doing. The timber cutter and dozer have left me butts that I
marked with an orange Q. I chop at the snow and mud from around the tines and
cut them out. My chain goes quickly, and it is so cold I can’t file the blade
back sharp. Can’t see the filings because it is so cold they are clogging up in
the file. Everywhere is devastation. Tree root balls dozed out of the way. Tops
of the trees scattered across the hillside. Though unsightly, it’s good to
leave the tops in the woods as it helps with erosion control. On the far side of the ridge the roads are so
steep and iced over that the skidder can’t get up there. I can see the dozer
driver rebuilding them—it will work for a while. Then the skidder will drag out
a few more loads and destroy the road enough that it’ll have to be rebuilt
again.
I remove four butts before lunch. I try to cut out the
butts and roll them to where the dozer can get them in all this debris. This
isn’t the best way to do logging. I always want to be in on the front end of a
cut because the back end, like today, is a disaster zone.
I come back down and everyone is gone. Hopefully they are
just getting lunch and will be coming back, or it’ll be a cold night in the
truck. I eat my sandwich in the truck looking out at the deserted site. I have
the engine running and the heat on my toes which are numb. With everyone gone
the birds have come out. Cardinals chase each other along with nameless other
birds I won’t pretend to know. I finish my lunch and they still aren’t back yet.
With nothing better to do I head back up the ridge searching for more butts.
I working steadily and don’t see them until a dozer comes by
me on the hillside. Jim the Timber cutter is standing on the winch of the dozer
and Terry is driving. I finish a few
more butts and then meet them where they are working a little further along.
Jim drops a couple more ash for me and I cut them out and we push them off the
hillside to the dozer down below.
“There’s a nice ash up on a shelf up there. Nice size for you. I’ll cut it for you if you want. You can roll it down when you’ve cut it out.”
“It’s up there though,” I say. We are on the steepest part
of the snow covered ridge and the idea of climbing it with a saw and mattock is
daunting. It would be hard on a good day, but in these conditions it is
dangerous. The trees up there are best approached from the topside, not from
below. A road will have to be built up along a hollow.
With no other ash left on the ridge, I leave my saw and go
up to take a look. The hillside is so slick I have to use my pick to climb up
there. Not only that, I have to climb over several rock outcrops. I’m not sure
I’ll even get my saw up here if I wanted to. It is four o’clock, time for the
boys to quit and this would be one more thing for Jim and his dozer driver to
do. It is a majestic towering tree standing just above the devastation below.
It too will be sacrificed. The tines on the ash run square on all four sides
and are even in height as the tree grows on a nice flat shelf. I lean on it and
look out at the rocky face of high Clinch and the pristine wooded ridge below
it and opposite the devastated one on which I stand. The hum of the diesel
engines run far below me and in the air I can smell the distinct odor of the
ash tree on which I lean. I can always smell the ash. It is inside me.
Though the butt looks good and Jim offered to cut it I would
be pressing my luck. Here is why. People ask me how I get ash. I get ash because
I have built relationships over years. I know enough about a logging site—proved
that I can keep up with the cutters, drop trees when I have to, not slow the
operation down, get out of the way, and not get killed. I have worked hard to get this trust and I work
hard to maintain it. Though it would make a good set of hurleys, that’s why I
leave that ash on the hillside. I am cold and tired. The cold has snapped the
strength out of me and I am ready to be finished. I take in one more smell of
this champion ash and carefully descend the hill.
Jonny loads the seven butts with the knuckle boom and I
think about going back up and taking some pictures of Clinch, but Jonny is in
his truck now waiting for me to leave. All the others have gone. No goodbyes. Only
Jonny waits. I can tell he wants to make sure I can get onto the road below, so
I drive out and he follows me. I am grateful for an ally here. It has been hard
earned.
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