Well we were logging in the Cricket area down at the end of the big long winding river and it was winter time. There lay on the forest floor upwards of 4 feet of snow. The timber fallers had fallen some timber when there was a foot and a half of snow on the ground but now there was 2 and a half feet more on top of that. We were trying to pick up the fallen timber before it was too late and the snow buried it.
Mikey and I were down the mountain beneath the big logging machine called the yarder and were hooking logs up to the cables that were sent out by the yarder for hundreds of yards. We were wearing rubber gloves to keep the snow and falling sleet from freezing our arms and hands as we dug out holes around logs to wrap choker cables around them.
Mikey was a wild one, prior speed addict, current alcoholic that was doing all he could to shirk our duties and find an excuse to go home early. Mikey liked to hook up as many logs as he could to the cables and see if he could break something. If he could break something then we would just build a fire and get warm while everyone else fixed it. It worked out that way sometimes but, often enough, they made us walk up the mountain and help them out.
I was looking for more buried logs when I notice a tree that the timber fallers had cut and it hadn’t fallen to the ground. The tree was huge, about 3 and a half feet in diameter and over 125 feet tall. It had slipped off its stump when they cut it off and stuck 3 or 4 feet into the soft Cricket County dirt. The top of the tree was hung up in a bunch of other trees. This meant that when I put a cable on it and the yarder started pulling on it there wasn’t no telling which way it would fall. The base could slip out of the hole and it would fall backwards away from the lines. Or the base could stay buried and pull the whole tree in whatever direction the chain of events and natural obstacles led the tree to go.
When Mikey started pulling on the standing cut tree with its base buried he gave out a yell of warning. I was standing in snow up to my chest trying to dig holes under logs when I heard, “Watch out!” I looked up to see the massive tree falling right in my direction. The base of the tree was buried enough and the tree was big enough that it was toppling over my way pretty slow like in the movies. Slow enough that I was able to hobble through the snow about four steps and crunch myself into the base of another tree face first.
The huge tree that had been hung up seemed to follow me to my hiding place. It came crashing down alongside of the tree I was standing beneath. Limbs piled around me tinking off my hard hat and brushing my arms, shoulders and legs. I tried to hide under my hardhat and was motionless, scared stiff, when the big tree finally quit falling and its top landed a foot and half away from my leg.
“Ya alright?!” yelled Mikey.
“Sure,” I replied and ran out of the way so he could continue dragging the tree up the mountain.
The lesson I learned that day, and followed from then on, was that you should never run from anything before you know just where it is going to go. If I would have stayed in my original position I would have been ok. But I ran right to where the tree fell. I have seen since many old timers to the woods wait until the last second to duck and dodge obstacles of nature flung their way because you never know what something like a rolling root wad or a falling tree might do.
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