89 Bikes Don’t Float

Flying in to the floating camp at GMG Logging the first time was not quite the shock it might have been if Sandy and I had not both grown up on an island. Sandy was introduced to island life when her dad moved his family to Shaw Island, just south of the border, in the San Juans. They lived in Kirkland Washington, but because her dad, Bill, was in construction, his work led him to the San Juan Islands, where he eventually moved the family just after Sandy turned eleven. As an eleven year old, Sandy thought it a neat place but her mother, as Sandy tells it, just sat there and cried. It was more then she could handle, when she realized she had moved from a house with all of the conveniences, to an old broken down farmhouse with no power or running water and an outhouse.

The floating camp at GMG, however isolated, had all of the conveniences of the city, but as I mentioned before, no roads to go anywhere, unless of course you were content to just walk up and down the boardwalk in front of the houses. For children this was fun enough as the school also had a play area and each house had its own decked area to walk or play on. The rule however was that no child could be outside without a life jacket as the floats did not have any protective railing whatsoever and the water was deep and ice cold. The unwritten rule stated that as soon as you could swim you did not have to wear your life jacket. That meant that each child yearned for the day when they could swim and get rid of the demeaning life jacket and join the world of the adults. As I just stated a moment ago the water was cold, and I mean cold and deep, so to learn to swim was no mean feat and if achieved did deserve some recognition.

Sandy as a good camp mom, was given the pattern designed by one of the boss’s wives, and certified by the WCB, so she could make both our kids life jackets. Knowing the nature of kids it was a certainty that one of them would fall in, and the lifejacket would enable them to live, and tell about it.

It wasn’t long before Teri who was about three, was out running around and went sailing off one of the floats into the frigid waters and came up gasping. Not to be out done by her, Joe a little foster boy who was up on a visit with my mom for a few weeks, a little while later found one of the camp triks and went roaring around the floats on it. Wouldn’t you know it? The inevitable finally happened, and off he went hell bend for leather into the water and came up sputtering. You should have seen the look on his face as he gasped for air, his eyes just about popping out of his head.

It’s times like these when parents are glad that they do all the right things, of course that did not save the trike as it was at the bottom of the inlet but at least the kids weren’t under forty feet of water with it.

Things sometimes turn out OK as a few weeks later Bruce Rayfuse one of the guys who lived in the bunkhouse put on some scuba gear and fished the trike from the briny deep

87 A Saw is Not Just a Saw

To day the skill of tree falling as with most trades is learned in a class so a person does not get killed the first hour at work. In the early days as with many other trades the skills were quite often learned on the job. Regardless of the method, safety was paramount if you were to survive and not get seriously hurt. Most accidents in the bush occurred when you ignored a known safety precaution or got in too big of a hurry.

This particular afternoon after I had just fallen a small hemlock in a new setting and was attempting to top it, I noticed that there was a small sapling lying before my undercut. The hemlock tree that I was about to top was under great tension as only the top and the butt were touching the ground and I knew that as soon as I began to undercut the tree it would break suddenly and drop to the ground. This meant that the broken fibers could catch the tip of my saw and drag it down, levering it out of my hand over the sapling. This could be very dangerous.

My safety training told me to cut the sapling out of the way, but I was in a hurry and in my impatience I imagined I could be quicker then the hemlock as it dropped. Against my best judgment I carefully put in the top cut and then cautiously began the undercut all the while waiting for that faint cracking of wood that would warn me of the impending drop so I could quickly remove my saw from the cut.

Snap and my worst fears were realized, in less then an instance the saw was gone, I didn’t even have a chance to wince, in microseconds the saw was whizzing past my nose and sailing in a big beautiful arc thirty feet into the air. I felt despair as I imagined my brand new saw of only a few weeks, coming to earth on a log or worse yet a rock and getting smashed to pieces. But lo, the gods of fate were smiling that day as my thirty three pound saw spun over and over, before coming down on the end of its blade like a sword thrust into the soft earth, with it’s engine still running. Moments later it fell over going put-put-put as the engine idled away upside down until I went down the hill to shut it off and check for any damage to the blade.

How thankful I was that it didn’t have a scratch on it, as the thought of having to replace a $4oo power saw made me feel a bit negative to say the least, as that was a lot of money back in ’64.

85 Quoth the Raven, “Gimme Your Lunch”

The story I am about to tell is true only the name has been changed to protect the raven. One of the things that lighten your day as a faller is being able to enjoy the wildlife that lives in the forest. Even though many of the creatures that make the forest their home, remain hidden during the daytime, there were blue jays that would come begging for a handout, and flying squirrels in abundance swooping from tree to tree. The evidence of bear were quite common and maybe even an otter from time to time.

To keep from misplacing my gear or accidentally dropping a tree on it, I would generally stuff my rain gear, if it weren’t raining, along with my lunch bucket and my extra wedges and sledge in a hollow stump or log to keep them safe.

What highlighted my experience however this particular fall was a raven, Old Pesky. At first I quite enjoyed seeing Old Pesky come flying in, if I imitated his call he would stop, slowly circle and answer me. In fact, it didn’t seem to matter where I was. It got so that every morning on or around ten o’clock he would spot me and come swooping down on his own. The flattery of his attention quickly turned to frustration when I had to search for my gear and especially my lunch bucket before I could eat my lunch.

Frustration finally turned to anger on the morning when Old Pesky finally figured out how to unsnap the clasps to my lunch bucket and eat my lunch. He wasn’t stupid, as he knew what was healthy and he would only eat the sandwich. He always left the apple and desert, not that I shouldn’t be grateful for his generosity, but it fell far short of quenching my hunger pangs and left me famished by suppertime.

This type of pesky behavior called for action on my part, but what to do short of shooting him but still modify his aberrant behavior presented a problem. When the answer came to me it was simple enough, just a small nail placed through the stop on each of the clasps would keep them from being snapped open and would do the trick.

Quite smug with the brilliance of my idea I went to the hollow log where my lunch was stowed the following morning only to find the lunch box laying already open on the ground, the sandwich gone, and no bird in sight. This called for some serious action on my part if I was to ever eat lunch again.

It finally came to me that the only remedy was to replace the nails with a small wire, that is, run it through the clasps and then twist the two ends together. The next day with my new design in place I could hardly wait to get to where my gear was stowed at lunchtime, to see it I had truly won the battle. Well there was my lunch box lying on the ground with all of my gear scattered around, and the leather shoulder strap that I carried my lunch with all chewed to pieces, but the lunch box was still shut tight. Yes it finally worked, but Old Pesky did not give up easily. It seems that in his frustration he had been dragging it every which way.

Well I think I won the battle but it was many mornings before Old Pesky finally gave up in frustration and quit chewing on my lunch box strap in the hope of somehow yanking it open. Not all battles in life are won but even a small victory is sometimes sweet.

84 A Fish Story

I’m sure that if you have ever fished you have a fish story, and if you can trump mine I want to hear it. My story begins one sunny weekend when Lloyd McGill and I decided to go fishing at Wyclees Lagoon where by all accounts the smallest fish caught would be at least forty lbs.

Not having any of my own fishing gear, Lloyd scrounged an old Pete’s Real with about a 120 lb test line and no leader for me to use. All I can remember is that his gear was somewhat better but as to what it was I now have no idea.

What I do remember is that it was a bad decision to take off without a fishing club or a net, and I would rue it to this day. With that we grabbed a lunch and took off for Wyclees Lagoon and a story that was waiting to be told.

In less then an hour we were at the lagoon and as the tide was not too low the water was flowing into Smith Inlet at only a moderate rate. We shot up the north arm of the lagoon and took a quick look around in the lagoon itself, before deciding to anchor in the north arm just where it emptied into Smith Inlet. Here we let our lines trail out behind the boat where we thought the fish would school before entering the lagoon. As we didn’t have an anchor we went ashore and found a large rock, which we tied to our bowline.

Our strategy seemed to be working as we had only been fishing a few minutes when I got a strike and my line started singing at a startling rate. My thought was that the break was on a little too much so I attempted to loosen it some. Not being familiar with the gear I backed the break off too much and suddenly the line was reeling out at lightening speed. In trying to retighten it I bloodied all my knuckles as the reel was spinning like a top. It was about this time that the fish reached the end of the line with such force as to bend the real sideways to the rod and it came lose and fell off. I was fortunate that the line was tied to the real as I quickly dropped the rod and was now able to begin pulling the fish in by hand.

All this time I was yelling my head off for Lloyd to lift the anchor, as I imagined the line was going to snap. How Lloyd got his line in and the anchor lifted I will never know but soon we were drifting wherever the fish would take us.

I continued pulling the fish in hand over hand when suddenly there he was this enormous dark green monster glistening just under the surface, I could have reached down and grabbed him by the tail, but better yet, where was the net to scoop him up? Back at camp of course.

The monster had hit the end of the line so hard that he had straightened the eye end of the hook. So with a flick of his tail he pulled enough slack to throw the hook and off he swam. I pulled the line in and there it was, the end of the line with a lonesome swivel, the hook and the fish had gone.

Lloyd didn’t seem to depressed but he wasn’t the one who had lost the fish, on the other hand why cry, the fish that got away is always the big one, and who knows, he could have been a one hundred and forty pounder only God knows for sure.