December 9

0 C frosty roofs!
Short mat bowls this am. Then hall decorating for Christmas dinner banquet tomorrow.
I think my Christmas shopping is done???
To continue with the story - hope I have that alignment fixed.

I measured one of his clearly defined tracks – it was five inches across!

My days were spent driving the highway and getting to know people along the three hundred plus miles. There were very few ‘off highway’ roads but those few that I found I followed them as far as conditions would allow. On my second trip to Trutch I found a third sawmill, the owner and his three sons only logged from private land and had got overlooked by those who had come before me. Obviously he had established his mill site with out the required permit and the sawing he had done to that point in time had not been scaled nor had a timber mark been issued as is required by law.

It took several visits and many cups of coffee while the law and the rules were explained but compliance was eventually forthcoming and we always parted amiably.

My summer Assistant eventually arrived with his wife and three kids. He was in his mid thirtys, devoid of any related experience but had a decent if unassuming personality. His name was Eric.

I certainly didn’t envy him living in his assigned quarters.

About all it meant was that during those first couple of months I had someone to talk to while I started averaging five thousand miles a month on the old station wagon.

On the fifteenth of May the Assistant for Muncho Lake arrived. He at least had been assigned a vehicle, I had him stay in Fort Nelson for one full day then sent him off to Muncho with the promise I would give him a few days to settle in then would come up and spend a couple of days with him. He was just twenty-one, he displayed a strong willingness to learn and didn’t show any concern that he would be mostly on his own. His name was Jack.

A day after Jack, the second Eric arrived this was the lookout man that I had met at Charlie Lake. This was his third year at Nel-X which meant he needed very little help, in opening up the one room cabin and the sixty foot tower. He had brought his wife and they had brought most of their supplies with them.

About the same time I got a phone call from the gas station at Prophet River, it was the Lookout man For the Prophet River lookout, he had kept his keys from the year before and had phoned to advise that he would drive himself and his wife up to the lookout and would call on the radio when they were all set up. I had learned from Sterling earlier on that Frank had been on Prophet for eight years and seldom needed any help.

So now I was set, I had two lookout men and two assistants, a muskeg tractor, a pickup truck and a station wagon suitable only for highway driving. But I also had quite broad authority; I could conscript able bodied men between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five, I could hire trucks, heavy equipment and aircraft. Let the fires begin!