"Got Wood?" II

These shots were taken on land the county purchased from me and that was recently logged to make way for the LeClerc Road widening project...Under local regulations, the timber revenue from the project goes to the former land owner with the county providing the loggers. As long as I've owned land in Pend Oreille County, I've been an adovocate of sustainable forestry.

Many members of my family are directly or indirectly supported by the Timber Industry. Some of my relatives work in the mills up near Colville, some drive logging truck, and some build log homes.

It goes without saying that I get very tired of loggers being portrayed in the media as earth destroying savages. Most loggers I know truly care about the environment and are just as disgusted by the land management practises of the larger timber corporations as folks are in urban areas.

The big timber companies have time and time again shown little concern for local communities, and often use the tired "global economy" excuse as the reasoning behind their decision to ship local log commodities overseas for processing. Despite slick public relations campaigns, these huges corporations are quite content to let the local mills go belly up, clear cut everything they can get their hands on, then lock up what remains of the forests, gating all access to prevent future public use.

The large timber companies have been irresponsible in their forest practises. The growing endangered species listings raps are entirely theirs to be held accountable for. It certainly isn't the local logger who is callously destroying the environment.

We who live in these woods respect their beauty, understand the fragile balance created by mother nature and we know full well that these rugged places are also our hunting and recreational escapes. No one wants to see the land abused. Yet the wholesale timber managers and the United State Forest Service, charged with overseeing these vast tracts of public and private lands, do so from afar. Often with little concern about what their actions do to local economies, watersheds and the environment.

I know people don't usually expect a gay guy to hold a pro timber position. I also believe in local natural resources accountability. I am proud of my family's legacy and the reality that my family has been and still is supported by the fruits of the land is a heritage that deserves no shame. But I also readily admit that I am disgusted with the large, unaccountable corporations who have created so many eyesores, and whose greed has abandoned the very landscape, and communities who allowed them to prosper in the first place.

Anyway, for those of you who don't come from "big timber country"...here's what happens when trees are logged...First the trees are felled....usually a logger cuts a large notch on one side of the "stick" and a smaller notch is then cut on the other side. If all works right, the tree will fall toward the larger notch...Often times though wind, fate, distribution of branch weight or other unseen factors contribute toward the tree falling in an unintended direction-these events are better known as "widow makers". Sometimes the pressure on the cut is so great, the cut travels up the trunk and becomes a "rocking chair" or "craddle rocker"...which is extremely dangerous.

Sometimes the chainsaw gets hung up on the cut and as the weight of a 100 foot tall stick rests on the chainsaw, the whole blade becomes stuck. This is also often the beginning of a very bad day.

Once the trees are sawed down, they are sorted by variety. Pictured here are Fir, White Pine, Lodgepole, Bull Pine (Ponderosa) and Larch logs. The sticks are cut to specific lengths, usually "short sticks" that start at 12 foot 6 inch lengths and go all the way up to 33 foot, 6 inch lengths. Short logs are preferable log lengths because logs are scaled (valued) by the diameter of the smaller end of the log. The shorter the log, the better the chance the log won't vary much from end to end.
The logs are then "bucked" and cleaned up, which means that the protuding branch ends are sawed down as close to the log trunck as possible. Sometimes logs will need to be set with a choker, or a series of chokers (known as tags) and then "skidded" down to a deck or landing where the logs are further sorted and readied for loading onto a self loading log truck.
Here my cousin Mike is shown sawing off a "butt cut". Log Yards require that each end of the log be uniform, ensuring that the "scale" of the logs won't get docked in value by the log yard or whoever the timber broker eventually markets their bulk timber to. Once the logs are loaded, the log truck driver secures the load and heads off to the log yard. In this case the sorting yard is only six miles from here, but the cost of transporting the logs runs about $300 per trip.
In some cases, the topography of the land dictates the logs end up some distance from where the trucks can load them...In cases like this, logs might have to be skidded more than once to a safer, more accessible location or in extremely remote locations, these sticks are picked up by helicopter and transferred to more convenient locations.
Here is a shot of the truck returning for another load, and an example of the "stinger" riding piggyback on the tractor...Local timber harvests are extremely efficient and nearly everything is used. Tree tops become fence posts. Smaller branches and limbes as well as small trees are chipped and become pulp, which is used in paper, newsprint, and toilet paper. Bark becomes landscaping material. So next time you head to home depot, or grab some Charmin, you'll have a little better idea of just how those products arrived on your local shelves. And that you might actually be using a 2x4 that once grew in Pend Oreille County.