LETTERS FROM HOME: WHERE THE FOREST MEETS THE TREES

June 2, 1994

Dear Leslie,

I am a lumberjack.

Well, I've felled my first tree but it wasn't exactly murder. More like an assisted suicide. Most of the old madrone was already dead but it crashed convincingly down the hillside afterward anyway.

I have become a weekend logger at the behest of Bill, a patient of DC's who shares a mountain with a lot of people who grow marijuana for a living. Bill doesn't anymore. Got tired of sleeping out beside his patch to prevent ripoffs.

He's almost entirely disabled anyway. Broke his neck in a teenage sports accident, and the effect has gotten progressively worse until in middle age he can barely walk using crutches. Now Bill winters in the Philippines, where he partakes of the warm weather, beer and $5 B-girls. He spends the spring and summer on this mountain, where the natural spectacle of tree and river and sky out the window behind the TV he sits before can make you cry.

So the government pays me a bit to help Bill out. Not long ago he broke both his feet, so he can't even drive. Every other week or so I bring him 15 cans of frozen grapefruit juice, 15 cans of limeade, a whole chicken, two jars of La Victoria hot salsa, a package of center-cut porkchops, a pound and a half of shelled almonds, 10 pounds of apples, 10 pounds of oranges and a gallon of milk. The order rarely varies.

After it's put away, I yank on that chainsaw and begin filling the woodshed for his return in the spring. Nights here have remained brisk until just this week, so he'll need the wood.

Bill is a demanding boss. If the store is out of an item, he questions whether I pressed the manager hard enough to find it. He came outside to watch when I did some yard work, and critiqued my shovel technique the whole time. A quite understandable need for control I've verbally fought a few times. I think it must be maddening to him to see someone misuse their physical strength when he has lost most of his.

When I cut down that first tree, Bill was there in the car yelling instructions out the window. Not that I didn't need them. Once I saw up close what a chainsaw could do to a tree I wanted to know everything about what it might do to me. He has taught me pretty well.

Turns out Bill's okay. Just very wary about being taken advantage of. Some days we talk awhile before I get to work. He tells stories about surfing and girls, and usually ends them by saying, "Don't ever break your neck."

I wish I knew what to say then.

I'm also working a more or less real job (free-lance writing and free-lance logging don't count for much, at least not to the bank). I help manage the local tourist office, which means answering questions for eight hours a day about what to do and where to go in Southern Humboldt County.

Fortunately, we loggers have spared a few spectacular redwood forests, and what with the ocean and six rivers, all the tourists really have to do is open their eyes. All any of us has to do.

DC's pregnant again. She delivered the news on Mother's Day, emerging from the bathroom with a pregnancy test strip and asking me to tell her whether it was positive or negative. I'm not sure whether she has a thing for low drama or just doesn't trust her eyes when her emotions are involved.

Hope this one can hang in there. How wondrous it would be to be 5 years old and peeking over the edge of the new millennium.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian and currently on a leave of absence in Garberville, Calif.