In contrast with the long description devoted to the lives of early lumberjacks, Schneider designates only four pages to the lives of loggers today. The characters in chapter 17: Feller-Buncher are two men that seem to have a remarkably blase attitude towards the wilderness around them. They decimate trees with ease using the hydraulic claws of the feller-buncher and seem to pay little attention to the park regulations and permits designed to protect younger trees. Instead of adhering to state laws John prefers to go off his own judgement when deciding which trees to ignore, "I just know how to tell which ones to leave... when you've cut long enough, you just know what that many trees" (198). Reading this, I found nothing enviable in the apparent ease that they were able to cut through the forest. It seems all too mechanized, like they were forsaking any connection with the wilderness in favor of higher profit yields. The way they spent their free time burning live trees, too, seemed like a metaphorical middle finger to the land around them. John does explain that the burning doesn't hurt the tree itself, but the way Scheider depicts him lighting a tree too small to cut makes the action sound despicable.
The old loggers, by contrast seem to have done hard honest work and nurtured a connection with the nature around them. Schneider's writing seems to transform from judgmental to romantic when describing the old axemen. They worked long hours felling the trees by hand, their profits depending on the strength of their arms and the size of their resolve. They slept near the woods in which they worked, reinforcing the idea that there existed some intangible connection between them and the wilderness. It was not an easy life, but it seemed like the hard work put into their job granted them some entitlement to the wood that they were possessing. I found myself thinking that they had earned a right to log in the woods by the long hours that they spent carefully and skillfully honing their craft. Unlike modern loggers, I felt like these axemen knew the land and were deserving of the benefits that it offered.
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ReplyDeleteSorry about the previous comment, it's hard to proofread them in this little box.
ReplyDeleteI think you raise an interesting point because Schneider's opinion of modern day loggers does seem to be rather low: given his potential audience, the story of the burning birch would most likely be interpreted as a desecration of the woods. I would like to add few facts about modern day loggers to make them seem a little more human.
First of all, machines such as the feller buncher are very expensive: I would guess that they cost at least somewhere in the hundreds of thousands for a small one and probably into the millions for a large and fancy one. So they are not machines that just anybody could operate. True, what they do is not particularly complicated, but neither is flying an airplane as most modern planes can practically fly themselves. It's being able to use the machine effectively in a variety of situations that requires a skilled operator. For instance, good crane operators have six figure salaries since their job requires a lot of skill and experience.
Secondly, the tree burning logger probably knows the forest, and his feller buncher, pretty well. He knows the birch will escape the fire unharmed and how to read the woods for which trees he's allowed to cut.
So while his connection to the woods is made up by oil and steel, he is connected nevertheless.