T Minus Eight

Sunday afternoon Mike and I were working on the mess on the top of the hill that is our property line, barb wire fence line and wind-ravaged, fallen and broken trees that litter the ridge line. He cut through a few fallen wild cherry trees and was going to pull them out of the way when strands of barb wire ended up wound up in and around the tracks of the logging bulldozer.

With him inching the dozer forward and backward while I tugged at the broken strands, we were able to free the dozer to once again attack the criss-cross tangle of trees and fencing.It is a good thing that the logging job that the neighbor is planning was put on hold for an extra week because this section is taking us a lot longer to make safe than we had originally planned. A few more tall trees are being taken out because they will not survive a clear-cut on the windy side of them, and there are more downed trees than we thought in the beginning.

With fire season rules in effect, we had to shut down all power saws at 1pm and begin the two hour fire watch. Mike had his turn of logs all hooked up to chokers on the back of the logging dozer. I packed both saws to the Gator and loaded them in. We found a spot in the shade and watched nothing happen (which is a very good thing while on fire watch). After about an hour or so I mentioned that it sure seemed like it was getting muggy and even in the shade we felt uncomfortable.

What seemed like only a few minutes later, a fine mist started and the sky turned dark. Mike moved to get aboard the dozer and I was going to follow down about a half hour later with the saws and a half-load of firewood that we had cut while cleaning up the mess. It didn’t take a half hour before I was soaked through, and the skid road was getting muddy. I barely made it off the hill because the road had turned slick. The weight of the wood in the back helped me keep traction but there was still a lot of slipping and sliding.

Over the course of 24 hours we picked up an inch of rain, for those of you who keep track you know what that means. For those of you who don’t, us salivate-ers will clue you in that 10 days after the first good soaking of the summer/fall season brings out the best Chanterelle mushrooms of the season. It is with great anticipation that I count down the days, after that taste of them last month I can hardly wait for what is to come.