The primary reason Omanson had hitchhiked out from Illinois to the northwest coast in November of 1973 was to find work and send his wages home to his wife, while camping in the woods to minimize expenses. The entire economy of the Olympic Peninsula depended, directly or indirectly, on logging and, as Omanson had worked for several years as a tree trimmer in Illinois, he had no trouble at all finding work. He considered joining a logging crew, but was strongly adverse to the clear-cutting of old growth forests, so he opted instead to work in a cedar shake mill, which relied primarily on salvage logs. Like everything related to logging, it was dangerous and demanding work.
Read Part I, First Days on the Peninsula.
My First Day at the Mill
On my very first day at the mill, I was put to work loading bundles of shakes in the long, airless trailer of a semi-truck, with the result that, by the end of the day, despite the coolness of the outside air, I was ferociously hot and soaked with sweat. This wasn’t the sort of work I had counted on at all. As it happened, I would start on deck splitting cedar slabs the next morning, and never again spend a day loading a truck, but this sort of miserable grunt work seemed to be how they broke in a new man, just to see how well he could last. I only endured it by promising myself that as soon as I was back at camp, I would throw off my clothes, streak down the trail through the woods, and leap headlong into the cold, clean Calawah River.
A Dip in the River
I probably should have told someone what I was planning but, as it happened, no one was watching when I tore naked through the woods and took a leap off a high bank into that clear, icy current. I was in good shape and had been a competitive distance swimmer just a few years before, but when I hit that water and went under, it was very nearly my last act on earth. I was completely unprepared for how cold a river running straight off a glacier in late November actually is, or how fast and deep the current could be. It was so cold it slammed the air completely out of my lungs, damned near stopped my heart, and effectively paralyzed me. I went under like a stone and in spite of every ounce of effort and will I could muster, I could not make my arms or legs move at all. Somehow I got my head above water and sucked the air into my lungs, but I was being swept along by the strongest current I had ever been in and kept sinking below the surface. By sheer luck the river coursed around a sharp bend and for a moment I was raked against the bank and was just able to grab the limb of a strong shrub, first with one, and then both hands. After a long time of just hanging on, I was able to haul myself out of the current and onto the ground. It was probably half an hour later that I dragged myself back into camp and pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a shirt. “How was your swim?” someone asked. “Bracing,” I answered, trying to sound as chipper as possible. “Mighty bracing.”
Working Deck at the Mill, and Almost Losing a Hand
Most of the cedar logs that came through the mill were big, some of them eight or nine feet in diameter or even larger. As we understood it, most (though not all) were salvage logs that had been felled as far back as the 1930s and just left on the ground, since the only trees those earlier loggers were interested in were Douglas fir and Sitka spruce. Some of the logs were from even earlier, from a “big blow-down” in the early 1920s, a hurricane-force wind that knocked down millions of trees— and some of those logs (it was said), had been lying there since the 19th century. Cedar is so full of fragrant oils that, except for the heartwood, it is almost impervious to rot and salvageable for many decades. By the 1970s, the rising worth of cedar made its salvage profitable and little family-owned shake mills, such as the one I worked for, were popping up all across the Peninsula like so many mushrooms.
Each log was off-loaded from a truck onto a chain-conveyor which fed it lengthwise into the mill like a harpooned whale being winched aboard ship. Once the log was in position, the operator started the 8-foot-long hydraulic saw that cut its way down the face of the log, spewing a plume of sawdust and slicing off a slab two feet thick and as much as nine feet across— or even wider. (Cedars over fifteen feet in diameter were still being felled along the Quinault in those years). Whenever a monster log came into the mill that the hydraulic saw could only sever partway, I would fire up the 40-inch Homelite, step around to the uncut side of the log, and finish the job myself. Once freed, the slab would slam to the steel deck with the sound of a cannon shot— and then it was my turn.
“Working deck” meant splitting the slab into bushel-sized blocks with a hydraulic wedge that you could swing around to any position. You picked your spot, pressed a button on the shaft, and plunged the wedge straight into the wood. You might then split the slab in two, especially if it was large, or just start splitting off blocks along the outer rim, working towards the center. Finally you hefted the blocks across the deck and stacked them by the splitter, who was relying on you to keep him supplied.
Wielding the wedge effectively depended on an accurate reading of the grain. There was a lot that could go wrong and it was all too easy to bury the wedge deep into a slab that refused to split apart, requiring recourse (once again) to the chainsaw.
As I had grown up splitting hickory, oak, maple, and even elm, with maul and wedge, reading the grain was second nature to me, and I found straight-grained western red cedar remarkably easy to work with— but still landed myself in difficulty now and again, thanks to the sheer gargantuan size of the slabs, which was completely new to me.
Another problem with monster logs was that they didn’t fit under the raised saw. The saw-bar pivoted on its base and was raised up hydraulically to an angle of maybe 60 or 70 degrees, which didn’t afford enough clearance for the largest logs. A few additional degrees could be obtained by manual force, by placing a hand on the bar, shoving it up a few more inches and holding it steady as the operator inched the log forward beneath it. Holding the bar up wasn’t easy— you had to put some shoulder into it— which meant that not only were the teeth of the saw pressed into your gloved hand, but they were also practically touching your shoulder.
If all this sounds nuts, it most definitely was. The mill owner didn’t endorse our method of pushing up the saw-bar, but neither did he prohibit it. He had to get those big logs through somehow, and he made sure we felt the pressure as much as him— to get those logs cut by any method available, and as quickly as we could. In the wildcat atmosphere of those boom times, out there in the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula, nothing much was regulated. There were no mandated safety protocols, no safety guards for equipment, and sure as hell no safety inspections. Everyone understood the hazards, and nearly everyone out there had grown up in logging families and took the dangers as a matter of course.
But even among experienced workers, things could go wrong, and did. In this instance what went wrong was that Mitch hit the wrong button. There were two buttons side by side: one moved the log forward and the other started the saw. While I was holding up the saw, with the teeth pressed into my hand, he should have moved the log forward. Instead, although he had done it correctly hundreds of times, on this one occasion he started the saw. The teeth, which were nearly half an inch wide, should have ripped right through my hand, between thumb and index finger, but such was their speed and force that they flipped my hand down and caught it on the backside instead: a single deep slash grazing the finger tendon. Given how off-balance I was, with all my weight pressing forward, it’s a wonder my shoulder wasn’t thrown into the saw as well, but somehow I wrenched out of the way and only my hand was cut.
Mitch was white as a sheet and probably looked worse than I did. My immediate response was to try and move all my fingers and thumb, for as yet there was no pain and, with my glove on, I couldn’t see the damage. Everything moved, so I knew I hadn’t severed anything essential. Mitch lifted my hand and started to remove the glove but when he saw the gash, he pulled the glove back up over it, not wanting to see anything more. The boss came running over, immediately sussed what had happened and gave Mitch a look that would have cowed a cougar. Someone walked me to the company truck and a few minutes later I was in the office of the local sawbones.
The doc was a gruff old coot who did not inspire confidence. He ordered the nurse to clean the wound, which was clotted with dirt and oil. She started to dab at it, tentatively, at which the doc cursed, grabbed my hand, and went at it fiercely with a swab like he was scrubbing a skillet. As soon as it was routed out to his satisfaction, he doused it with something that stung like fury. “If that’s whiskey,” I said, “I could do with a little myself.” The doc snorted and said I didn’t look old enough for a man’s drink. Then he stitched me up, wrapped it in gauze, pulled my filthy glove back over it, and said I should get back to work.
At the mill I lied to my boss and said the doc had told me to go home for the rest of the day, and the next day as well. Which I did.
Fifty years later, I still have the scar from that day, and every time I see Mitch— about once every ten or fifteen years— I make a point of showing it to him, and reminding him of the time he hit the wrong button.
To a New Camp, Further Downriver
At the end of November, as promised to the rangers, we dismantled and cleaned up the camp. Everyone scattered, most of them leaving the Peninsula for the winter in search of drier climes. Mitch and John had the idea that I was such a greenhorn I couldn’t safely look after myself, and so decided we would all find a new location and build a new shelter together. In fact, they were both making plans to get out of the woods as soon as possible, and figured I would come to my senses and leave the woods as well, once the cold winter rains began in earnest.
They found a new location further downriver, just out of the national park, which meant it was probably on land owned by one of the big logging companies like Weyerhauser or Rayonier. It took us about a day to put up the new shelter, using visqueen and poles from the old shelter. It was right on the river, at the base of a steep slope, and well out of sight of the road. There was a partially hidden place just off the road where Mitch could park his truck. It wasn’t ideal, everything considered, and it would be just a matter of time before we were discovered and booted off, but Mitch figured none of us would be there that long anyway.
Our immediate problem was finding a stove. The cast iron one used in the first camp had finally met its Waterloo, and the county dump had nothing else on offer just then. New woodstoves weren’t available in Forks. You had to drive to Port Angeles for the nearest dealer, but none of us wanted to lay out the cash for a new one anyway.
Mitch had the solution. He motioned me toward his pickup. “Come on,” he said. “Time for you to meet Robert Lee!”
Robert Lee: the Old Logger Who Lived in a Box
We drove some fifteen or twenty miles south of Forks on 101 until, with no warning, Mitch pulled off on the east side of the highway, immediately north of the Hoh River bridge. We got out of the pickup and were greeted by a large, long-haired, amiable dog who looked as if he might be half St Bernard and half something else. He just walked up to us and stood there grinning, with his tongue lolling out and his long plume of a tail slowly sweeping from side to side. But no sign of Robert Lee.
We walked over toward a great rectangular plywood box as big as a semi-trailer with one closed door, no windows and a capped stovepipe, out of which a thin stream of white smoke slowly trickled. While still about thirty feet away we stopped and Mitch emitted a long, loud “Robert Lee!” Nothing happened. “R-o-b-e-r-t — L-e-e-!!!” From inside the big box came a muffled roar followed by slow deep grumbling like distant thunder, a heavy deliberate tread that shook the trailer with each step, and then the door swung open, revealing a shabby mountain of a man who filled the doorway and stood so tall that he had to crook his neck to get his big skull beneath the door header. He regarded us sleepily, squinting against the sun and rumbled once more by way of greeting. He was dressed in heavy caulked boots, stagged logger’s pants, faded red suspenders and what looked to be a long-sleeved gray woolen undershirt that had long since darkened to black beneath his arms and around his neck. His rough gray hair looked as though it had been hacked off with a kitchen knife and he was wearing several days worth of gray stubble. I guessed him to be in his mid-60s, but he was so thoroughly disheveled it was impossible to tell.
The purpose of our visit, of course, was that we needed a woodstove, and Mitch figured Robert Lee might just have something lying around among all his derelict vehicles and heaps of junk that would fit the bill. As it turned out, he had a hideous old barrel stove that he had sometime earlier knocked together from a 55-gallon drum. It stood upright on end, a little crumpled on one side, and splotched with rust. The stovepipe emerged from the top, situated just inside the rim. The larger remaining section of the top was removable, which is where the stove was loaded. The drain hole, on the side near the bottom, served as the only draft and, as we later discovered, was much too small to do an adequate job. To keep a low fire alive, you had to lie flat on the ground and blow into the drain hole until you were red in the face. Robert Lee said we could have the stove for nothing. I’m sure he was glad to see the back of it.
Mitch and Robert Lee exchanged a few pleasantries as I heaved the barrel into the back of the truck, and then we were on our way.
The Dickey River People
After working in the shake mill for a couple or three months, Mitch decided at some point that it was time for a change of scenery and joined the Dickey River People as a tree-planter. They were a loosely-organized group of young long-haired men and women under contract with the Forest Service to plant Douglas Fir seedlings (several inches tall) on steep logged-over slopes along the Dickey River north of Forks. It was grueling “stoop-labor,” on very rough ground choked with stumps and treacherous logging debris known as “slash,” probably because it was easy to slash open a leg or worse on the spear-like shards if you stumbled and fell into a pile of it.
Tree planters worked under miserable winter conditions, often in cold rain or sleet, for long hours each day. Like loggers, they never wore rain gear but worked soaking wet in woolen long johns. They camped out on the land where they were working, a fortunate few in hand-built cedar campers on pickup trucks, but most of them in tents— although I met two hardy young men who simply threw some visqueen over a bush each night and crawled under it.
It was a hard, unforgiving life. You had to be young and fit and disciplined enough to plant several hundred trees each day— day in and day out. You carried a big sack of seedlings over your shoulder and used an ancient digging tool known as a hoedad. You drove the blade of the hoedad into the ground, used it as a lever to widen the hole, dropped in a seedling, then “heeled it in.”
Once a tract was planted, the group would land another contract, pull up stakes and move gypsy-fashion to the new area. They were wilderness junkies, addicted to a life as far from the city as possible. In the spring, many of them would use the money they had earned to travel to Alaska where they would spend the summer camping in beautiful remote places. Then they would be back in the autumn, set for another winter of grueling work with their tree-sacks and hoedads. After joining them, Mitch lasted about three weeks. Later he would join a gyppo logging outfit as a choker-setter which, while far more strenuous and dangerous, he preferred to the miserable drudgery of tree planting.
*
Read the rest of BJ Omanson’s four-part serial memoir:
- Part I, First Days on the Peninsula
- Part 2, Working in a Shake Mill
- Part 3, A Solitary Winter in the Woods
- Part 4, Rambles with Robert Lee (coming June 5th, 2023)
BJ Omanson’s memoir, Three Years on the Nowhere Road (2023), was published by Monongahela Books and is available here.
You can also watch BJ read his poem “Closing Inventory” here.
Learn more about BJ on our Contributors’ Page.
- SERIAL MEMOIR Part 4: Rambles with Robert Lee by BJ Omanson - June 4, 2023
- SERIAL MEMOIR Part 3: A Solitary Winter in the Woods by BJ Omanson - May 22, 2023
- SERIAL MEMOIR Part 2: Working in a Shake Mill by BJ Omanson - May 8, 2023