This story is true as I remembered it after 56 years, Names have been changed for obvious reasons.
Modern day cruising is quite different from the grinding field work and computerless calculations of the 1950's. We didn't have gps, snowmobiles, helicopters or special shelters. We didn't have spray paint or forestry ribbon, good pay and overtime.
We had axes, raw hide and hickory snowshoes, canvas tents, compasses, two hundred dollars a month and our board while working.
Here is part one.
SNOWSHOES AND PACKBOARDS
Mid January
1.
| H |
e awoke in the dark and listened to the sounds of sleep coming from the other cots in the room.
He stretched luxioursly enjoying the contrast of the warmth in his sleeping bag to that of the cold air touching his nose. Then remembering that there was only one shower for the nine men in the room, he quickly slid up and out of his sleeping bag cocoon, grabbed his towel from the chair beside his cot and padded across the linoleum covered floor to the bathroom.
Five minutes later he emerged from the room, the towel around his waist and grinned as he watched the others struggle from their beds and jockey for position in the lineup for the toilet and shower.
His name was Harvey Davidson, a young man, not yet twenty, medium height and build his body lean and muscular, his face tanned or perhaps weathered from a life outdoors in all seasons and the elements of those seasons.
Harv, as he was known was one member of the two timber cruising crews of the Northern Forestry Region. The other young men in the room consisted of Jerry Magill a cruiser and Ken Larum, Jerry’s compassman; they were one of the two cruising crews or pairs as they were often called. The others were six members of two squads of silviculture tree markers. There was always intense rivalry between the cruisers and the tree markers both on and off the job. Noting that Jerry and Ken were first in line, Harv couldn’t help making the comment that there was probably just enough hot water for two more showers!
An hour later, Harv, Jerry and Ken were pulling up in a Jeep wagon in back of the Regional office. Harv, a compassman at the time was wondering what the day had in store for him. The preceding week the cruiser he had been working with had been reassigned to a Ranger District, so at the moment he was without a senior partner.
The trio entered the Regional Management Forester’s office together, their collective boss, Gordon Walcott arrived at the same time and they all sat down together, cups of coffee in hand. Gordon was a touch portly and inclined to pomposity. He had been on several bush survival exercises while serving in the army reserve and considered himself an expert in bush travel. Still he was liked by his crews who soon learned to take him in stride; their contact with him was usually infrequent as, in spite, of his professed knowledge, he seldom left the office.
As they settled down with their coffees, Gordon said, “A couple of things guys. Harv, you are only half a crew so here is what is going to happen, as of this morning you are promoted to cruiser, Ken you are reassigned as Harv’s compassman and Jerry your new compassman will arrive in a little while.”
The three sat looking a bit stunned while they digested this sudden announcement. Harv thought, ‘Wow, this is great, but Ken isn’t going to be happy. I wish Gordon had been more diplomatic.’
He was right, Ken stared at the floor thinking, ‘Why him? Our seniority is the same, I’m older and I’ve worked in the north longer. But no point arguing.’ Then he looked up at Harv and said, “Congratulations, boss, I’ll wait for your orders.” And he left the room.
Gordon, content in his role as supervisor and his surprise announcement carried on, “Jerry, you’re new guy is pretty young, but has lived out in logging camps so should come along pretty good. I’ll give you a few days to take him out of town and teach him the ropes. We have a large cruise to do along the south shore of Tezzeron Lake, both crews will work together, it will be a campout so I’ll go along and help you get set up for winter conditions.”
Harv and Jerry both stared at him in amazement, they were used to tenting situations but neither had ever heard of one in the winter. Jerry broke the silence with, “How big is this thing and when are we supposed to start?”
“Its about 5000 acres, I want you on site next Monday.” Was the reply.
Harv followed with, “Let’s see this is Monday, Jerry is going to be training the new guy until Thursday, 5000 acres in the winter on snowshoes will take us six weeks at least. So will our supplies be delivered periodically?”
“Oh no, that just won’t work, this week you and Ken will help me get your food and camp supplies together, we can all head out Friday morning and overnight in Ft. St. James. The Ranger tells me there is an old bunkhouse at the end of the road where we can stay until your camp is ready, he will have a ‘cat’ plow the road out for us.” Was the reply, he then went on, “I’ve made a list of everything you’ll need from the Regional Cache, you can get that all together today then get your groceries and pack them up after that.” He passed a folder across his desk, and said, “Here’s your list and the application, map and aerial photos, you should have a look while we’re waiting for Milford, the new guy. You can use my office, I have a meeting to go to.” He grabbed his coffee cup and headed down the hall.
Harv and Jerry stared at the folder lying in front of them, then Jerry said, “Well I guess we better have a look and see what we have.”
They opened the file studied the application then unfolded the topographical map that was included. The termination of the logging road and the cabin Gordon had mentioned were marked on the map and the boundaries of the area of application had been drawn in red. Harv picked up a ruler and measured the distance from the cabin to the east boundary (closest boundary), a quick calculation set it at five miles down the lake plus another mile inland from the shore. He looked at Jerry and said, “Well there goes any chance of working from the cabin, that’s over an hour each way just to access the closest point and even if we leave in the dark and come back in the dark it doesn’t leave many hours for cruising.”
Jerry just nodded then said, “Look the application is tied to an old Special Timber License corner that starts here by the cabin and goes west for two miles, there is nothing surveyed any closer. And I’ve had to ‘tie’ into STL’s before and they are usually poorly marked.”
“And it looks like the STL has been partly logged so there may be nothing.” Harv added.
Jerry nodded and said, “Look here, this application is dated June 29th, so where has it been all this time?”
Harv just shrugged and said, “If you like I’ll draw the boundaries out on the photos, I can use some of the land marks as reference points, it’ll be close enough.”
“Sure, that’ll give me a chance to find and talk to my new compassman.” Jerry replied, then added, “I don’t think Ken is too happy, but he’s a good guy, he’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, I know, we’ve always got along fine, it was just the surprise and doing it in front of us. I’ll go see where he went and get him to help with the photos.”
Harv found Ken in one of the other offices and asked him to help with the photos, Ken followed without comment and within the hour the paper work was done. As they were finishing, Harv cleared his throat and said, “Hey Ken, I know that was a bit of a shock a little while ago, it was to me too. I just want you to know that I appreciate you have as much experience as I do, but there was only one opening and I guess I got lucky.” Ken said nothing but just looked Harv steadily in the eye. Harv continued, “I’m not going to talk about this again, but I want you to know I’m glad we’re together, I know that we can be the best cruising pair they’ve ever had.” He held out his hand.
Ken hesitated then briefly grasped the proffered hand and said, “Fine by me, you’re the boss.”
Harv flushed slightly, started to reply, and then simply said, “Okay, I’ve got the warehouse list, lets go.”
2.
| L |
ater that afternoon as Harv and Ken were just starting to move the camping gear down to the loading area, Jerry arrived with his new protégé, a tall gangly kid of about seventeen or eighteen.
Jerry said, “This is the new compassman, Milford Rafferty, Milford this is Harvey and Ken.”
Milford nodded and grinned in reply to their greetings, then asked what they were doing. Harv told him that all the stuff on the floor was what they would be using in their camp and they were now starting to get it ready for loading. Milford nodded, grinned again then started wandering around the warehouse looking into the various bays and shelves.
“Hey, come on back.” Jerry called, “ We’ve got some work to do here.”
The four carried the equipment down the single flight of stairs and piled it in front of the door on the loading platform, “I won’t get my Jeep until tomorrow morning so we’ll get the groceries tomorrow, but we will be ready to go by Thursday.” Harv said.
“Yeah we’ll be ready by then too.” Jerry responded. “A few hours will do for teaching him the compass, pulling and rolling the chain. I think I’ll get his snowshoes right now and we’ll do a couple hours in the bush above the cut banks as well. I don’t know where Gordon got the idea it would take three days, everyone else learned the first day on the job.” He then pulled a sleeping bag out of the pile, tossed it to Milford and said, “C’mon, lets walk over to the bunk house and get you set up, I think there is still one cot left.”
All four, the snow squeaking under their feet, walked across the compound to the 18’ x18’ plywood prefab they called the bunkhouse.
The next two days passed quickly and by Wednesday afternoon, both jeeps and Gordon’s station wagon were fully loaded. Harv’s Jeep contained the canned goods so was left in the warehouse where a low heat was maintained through the winter.
Their departure on Thursday was delayed until mid morning while Gordon, grumbling because they were a day early, attended to some last minute office chores.
The small convoy of three vehicles arrived in the small village of Fort St. James in mid afternoon, the temperature according to a thermometer outside the only hotel showed fifteen degrees below zero Fahrenheit. After checking in and packing the canned goods upstairs, they all crammed into Gordon’s station wagon and drove the two miles to the local Forest Ranger office. There they were told that the ‘cat’ that was to do the snow plowing from the main road to the cabin had just left by lowbed that morning. But ‘not to worry it would be done early tomorrow’.
Jerry voiced what was on Harv and Ken’s minds, “ Yeah, but is it cold enough for the road to freeze up after the snow is gone?”
The Ranger gave a slight shrug and Gordon said, “Oh of course it will be, the frost will already be in the ground.”
Whether the road would be ready or not, it was out of their hands and they could only wait until the next day to find out. So after a coffee with the Ranger staff they all headed back to the hotel. Gordon suggested they go for a beer as they entered the lobby. Ken declined and Milford because of his age followed suit. Harv said, “I’ve been in this one before so I should be able to do it again.” But as a precaution he took a seat that partly blocked the line of sight of the bartender.
It soon became obvious why this beer parlor was nicknamed ‘the Zoo’. There was a large sign behind the bar that requested patrons to leave any weapons with the bartender. Many of the customers of varying ethnic background were even at this early hour in advanced inebriation. The waiter was constantly stopping squabbles and in the next hour and a half, four people were forcibly removed. When nearby patrons started trying to move in on their table the three of them realized it was time to go.
When Harv got to the room that he and Ken were sharing, he found Ken stretched out on one of the beds reading a book. He said, “You didn’t miss much although some of it was entertaining.” Ken just gave a small ‘mmhm”.
Harv, who liked to read continued, “What you reading there Ken?”
After a couple of seconds, “A book”. Was the reply.
Harv, always with a temper that was kept in check finally had enough, “Jesus Christ Ken, I can see it’s a book. Look, you and I are going to spend a lot of time together and you know as well as I do that we’ll get into situations that we may need each other, we sure as hell have to work together. I’m sorry if your nose is out of joint, but just remember I am qualified and just for the record Steve and I have been the most productive pair since I came here over a year ago. If you’re not going to work at making us perform as a pair then lets go down the hall right now and get you reassigned.”
By the time Harv finished Ken had lowered his book and had raised his eyes to look Harv in the face. “I’ll do my share, we don’t need to have anything changed.”
“Okay, lets leave it at that.” Said Harv, embarrassed by his outburst. He turned away, opened his pack and started taking out clothes for the next day.
Behind him he heard, “It’s called The Sun Also Rises.” There was a pause, then, “It’s by Hemingway”.
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