Working In The Northwest Woods: A personal history of a decade spent working in the forests of the Northwest.
Dennis Willard
Language: English
Pages: 234
ISBN: 1466388897
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this first-hand account of a decade spent in the outdoors in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, we are taken on a journey revealing life inside the United States Forest Service. Starting as a first year seasonal, a young man who has spent his life in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri is transported to the Cascades.
Follow him as he learns his way around the rugged terrain of the big timber country. From the personal narrative of his initial experiences to gripping accounts of encounters with wild weather, wild fire and wildlife, the author takes you on a voyage into the backcountry of the Northwest Woods.
Read about going face to face with bears, experience the awesome beauty encountered while dodging lightning bolts on mountaintops and hear what it is like to be surrounded by wildfire. These are essays and stories telling of a life that is growing harder and harder to find in our mechanized and technological world. This book is a terrific summary of adventure and humor and the pure joy of what it is really like to live your life on the outside.
the cut and after the burn, what remains is a land of stumps and brush. At times the slash fires are so hot that all of the organic matter that has collected on the surface of the ground for decades is incinerated, leaving a sterile mineral base. Rarely, however, are entire areas cleared to such an extent and usually there remains a layer of duff and litter and debris to protect the soil to some extent. The next step in the cycle is to replant the area that has been logged. It was this
to drag the logs from farther inland to the waterfront along “skid roads”. The logging moved away from the saltwater shores to the rivers where once again the timber could be dropped directly into the water of the flowing streams and guided downriver to the waters of Puget Sound. Soon these riverfronts were depleted of timber and animals were again pressed into service to drag the logs from farther and farther away to the river banks. The event that fueled most of the timber cutting in the
our ability to avoid any problems with the south side reprod. As we picked up speed and the fire heated up a bit, we were getting good intensity but keeping things under control. At about two thirds of the way down the hill, we were chased down by one of the crew that was working the line along the old growth who, with some urgency, told us the fire had moved into the timber there and was starting to heat up. I handed off my drip torch to the crew member in front of me and went with the spotter
thinning as well as other activities. I was keenly aware of the earnings potential in those positions having signed off on a few contracts during that time. It was substantially more than I was making in my current job, which barely provided me with enough money for survival. I contacted an outfit from Seattle to check into possibilities. Bear Paw Forestry had done some work for me on the Monte Cristo District and after a couple of conversations, I decided to sign on with them and give it a
it dried. And I complain about rain gear. It’s fun to let my mind wander and drift back to the distant past, imagining what it was like for the sailors on Vancouver’s ship as he sailed into Puget Sound for his first look at the “luxuriant” forest. It’s fun to imagine what it must have been like here, before freeways and cities, to see the coastline covered solid with timber that continued all the way to just below the summits of the mountains. And it’s fun to imagine those early days of axes