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The Lumberjack
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| A relatively unheralded industry, logging seems to only come into the spotlight when there is an issue at hand. While we use paper and wood products on a daily basis, our furniture, paper towels, and toothpicks don’t arouse much interest; Spotted Owls do. Nonetheless, logging is a major industry and much of it is done in an environmentally concerned manner by people who feel a strong connection with the forest. While the public frequently perceives the “logging industry” as some behemoth that irresponsibly rapes the land for its trees, much logging–and most of that done in areas such as Wayne County, Pennsylvania–is done by individual loggers who are intensely aware of the impact of logging.
Small businessmen, working to support their families, these people form an important part of a rural economy, feeding the small lumber mills that dot the area and, in turn, feed lumber to local businesses. Bruce Woodmansee is one such person. Like most who log in the area, he was born and raised in the area in which he works–his ancestors have lived in this area since well before the Civil War. His roots go deep and his concerns for the development and use of the land are many. He sees his role as more than that of a logger: he sees himself as a caretaker for the forest, a caretaker whose responsibility it is to tend to a renewable resource. |
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| Bruce Woodmansee | ||
Picking your way along the logging trail best suited for the log-dragging bulldozer that cut it, with the mud sucking at your boots and insinuating that gravity is playing some cruel trick, there is little appeal to being a logger. Summer’s rain and morning’s humidity seem to conspire against your progress. But then you stop and, when the sound of your own, labored breathing subsides, you listen. The man-made sounds–the cars and trucks, the sirens and whistles, the shouts and calls–that form the unrelenting background of “civilized” existence are gone; the sounds of the forest wash over you. Bruce Woodmansee’s love for this job begins to take on meaning. Like so many of his replies, Bruce’s response to the question of “why” is given in the form of a story that both answers the question and provides insight into the man: “The other day it was hot and I’d been logging all day, and I was feeling tired, really tired; so I sat down on a log to rest. As I was sitting there, I saw something moving, could just barely detect its movement, along under a layer of leaves. I poked at it with a stick and it stopped for a few seconds. Then it started to move again, so I started to move the leaves so I could uncover it and find out what it was. It was a mole. There I was, feeling hot and tired, and this mole made me completely forget that and focus on him. That’s what the woods give me. That’s what brings me back.” |
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| It is this solace, this oneness with the forest and the inhabitants of the forest, that brings Bruce back to logging in spite of the pain and danger that periodically cause him to consider quitting. It is the oneness that brings him to seek out another tract of land to log, to negotiate the split of profits with the property owner, and to arrange for the trucking and the milling. Life is hard in the Endless Mountains of northeast Pennsylvania, and the independent logger has to do it all; no company or mill is there to guarantee a purchase or a paycheck. And it is the oneness with the forest that is the driving force behind the sense of responsibility Bruce feels for the land: “I won’t murder a piece of land. Clear cutters come in and don’t give a damn about what they do and the permanence of their damage. I won’t do that; I cut nothing that isn’t sixty inches [in circumference] at the stump and always leave a barrier of uncut trees so I don’t ruin the looks of the place for the people who live here.” | ||
| Clearly, he takes pride that he’s now working in forests he harvested as a young man in his twenties; and it is tacitly understood that he will harvest them again some day. The notion of reciprocity–he both uses and nurtures the forest by his selection and cutting–is ingrained in him and forms the core of his sense of professionalism. There is also a strong sense of legacy carried in Bruce. Logging is a trade he learned from his father, and with a minimum of coaxing he’ll show you the four foot stick which is for him both a tool and a talisman: resembling an ax handle with a notch carved around the middle, the stick gives him a quick and accurate way to measure and mark felled trees so they can be cut into the ten, twelve, or twenty foot lengths called for by the mills. His father gave him the stick. Because of this, he’s proud of it and even worries that it might be lost, broken, or mistaken for something that’s expendable. | ||
| While only a little work is needed to get him to bring out the stick and demonstrate its use, it takes even less coaxing to get him to talk of his father and their work together. In the tick of a second, the lumberman who wields a chain saw as if it was a plastic toy and is so focused that there is no room for any thought except the tree before him and the path it will take when it falls, is transformed into someone who even now, years after his father’s death, emits a sense of awe and pride when he tells of their work together and his father’s prowess as a woodsman. Continuing the legacy, Bruce’s son, Brad, works alongside, apprenticed to Bruce and to the forest. It’s an uneasy peace, this father and son working side by side in a business that, at every move of the bulldozer or roar of the chainsaw, holds the potential for sudden injury or death. Bruce demands the precision and forethought that he knows are necessary ingredients of safety. At nineteen, Brad looks for straight lines and shortcuts that youth tells him will more quickly get him to quitting time. | ||
| But just when it appears that the teacher-student relationship will impinge on the father-son relationship, Bruce moves out of earshot and Brad’s comments about his father echo Bruce’s comments about his. Suddenly, it is as if father and son are one person telling one tale, solemnly and reverently paying homage to the teacher who has preceded and whose lessons are sometimes hard, sometimes trying, but always a source of respect: “Nobody can pick and cut like my Dad. He can walk through the woods and, just by looking around, pick out exactly which trees are the best to cut. Then he can look at a tree and the trees around it and make the cut so it falls exactly where it has to fall for us to be safe and to get it out of here without any hassle. He’s the best around.” It takes little imagination to envision Brad, twenty years from now, showing off the four foot stick his grandfather made for measuring logs. |
Timber Harvesting & Forest Management 