Big Darrel

It was a cold day in the Siskiyou Mountains with a fresh layer of snow on top the snow that already lay. A Crawford logging crew began the day of work in the usual way. Choker setters and rigging slingers went to the brush. Choker setters ran cables around logs and the rigging slingers hooked those cables to the main rigging attached to the great big yarder on top of the mountain. The yarder yarded the logs to the landing.

Darrel was the rigging slinger and in a jolly mood. Him, and the new boy Charlie were having a bit of fun in between the work with a friendly snowball fight. Darrel was a fairly kind man, simple in his ways, and a hard worker. He was around 40 years old and had been logging for 20 years. Therefore Darrel was a big man resembling a Siskiyou brown bear. The environment was friendly and the laughter rang through the air.

The crew was picking up the logs from a big clear-cut that had been buried in a couple feet of snow in the last few days. In order to make the story understandable one must draw a picture showing the reader that there were no obstacle between the crew and the logging road 200 yards down the steep mountainside. When a high-lead logger says steep he means hard to stand up on without falling over. In some cases a high-lead logger may even mean so steep a body can take a small jump and land 25 feet up in a tree. In this case it was not that steep but definitely steep enough a tenderfoot would have a hard time keeping his balance.

Charlie was a new boy who hadn’t quite figured out the crew. Darrel seemed like a good ole’ boy but Charlie hadn’t made Darrel mad yet. The snow ball fight grew a bit more vigorous and, being as Charlie had more time to prepare his ammunition and aim between the rigging rounds, Darrel was getting the rough end of the game.

“Aight Charlie, knock it off!” Darrel yelled directly after being pelted in the head with a snowball. Charlie laughed and said, “You given up? Hah Yer a chicken liver man!”

After a short period of time Charlie found himself curious to just what Darrel’s reaction might be should he let another snowball fly. The hard-packed ball of snow took Darrel between the shoulder blades and Charlie began to burst out laughing when suddenly he realized that there was a 200 lb ball of muscle and grit barreling down upon him. Darrel slammed into the 145 lb body of wire and bone, flipped him on his front and slammed both knees in Charlie’s back. Charlie had on brand new raingear shiny and slick. Charlie’s face ground painfully on the cold white crystals of snow as Darrel rode the poor new boy all the way down the mountain like a sled.

At the logging road in the bottom of the unit Darrel jump up off Charlie’s back and this time he laughed. Charlie did not laugh he was done. He cursed up a storm and walked away, got on a log truck head for home, and stayed away from high-lead logging for good.