In the first article in this series, “The Road to Consultanthood: Musings of an Antique Arborist,” TCI Magazine, February 2023, the author looked at his introduction to tree care and some of the now-outdated practices and equipment being used at that time.

The first season of my arboricultural journey was a positive experience. Previous attempts at financial independence included newspaper delivery person, bicycle-wheel packer, kitchen slop cleaner-upper, parking-garage attendant and office-supply order picker.

Of all the aforementioned career possibilities, distributing the local rag by chucking it onto porches from the seat of my “Playboy”-edition bike (banana seat, high handlebars) seemed to suit me best. Even delivering the Sunday edition in the pre-dawn hours of a winter morning via Radio Flyer wagon seemed preferable to the stuffy indoor environments I had experienced. I would work outside.

Go West, young man

A captivation with big trees inspired me to celebrate the year of America’s bicentennial by hitchhiking cross-country to the Pacific Northwest. I had somehow pre-arranged lodging and employment at the esteemed John Flinks potato farm in Monteseno, Washington. After a season of spud farming and getting a feel for my surroundings, I eventually made my way north on Route 101, from Aberdeen through Humptulips to Lake Quinault in Olympic National Park.

The tree giants of the Pacific Northwest’s temperate rainforests proved to be less celebrated yet no less spectacular alternatives to the sequoias of northern California. Two-hundred-plus-foot red cedar, hemlock and Sitka spruce dominate the overstory. Big-leaf maples draped with moss take in what little light the giants allow. Huge ferns and layers of duff, green as a field of shamrocks and soft as a roll of Charmin, camouflage the nurse logs enriching the soil and huge networks of what I would later learn to be mycorrhizae within.

Much of the timing is a blur, but over the next four years I worked in cedar mills, cedar-log salvage, forest thinning, forest regeneration and logging. Unconsciously, I was setting a course and obtaining first-hand knowledge that would eventually prove invaluable. As is par for the course in life, many of those experiences were notable for “how not to…”

Logging

Cedar-log salvaging was a humbling experience. The terrain was difficult. Being the rain forest, it was usually raining. As such, one was almost always encumbered by a rubber rainsuit, where the hazards of passing gas cannot be overstated.

On the sunny side, the work provided good insight to tree innards. Trees left from previous logging operations were first cut into 24-inch-long rounds. The rounds were then hand split into manageable sections (blocks) with a Flintstone-era mallet and “froe,” a long, sharp blade mounted perpendicular to a handle. One-quarter to one-half cords of blocks were then stacked, wrapped in slings and lifted by helicopter to a landing site.

The fine-grained, instrument-quality “taper wood” split like “buttah.” That highly contrasted with the unyielding resistance of reaction wood, knots and woundwood often encountered in salvage logs. We were paid by the cord. It behooved one to recognize signs of defects before committing a four-foot saw blade to a low-quality log with potentially hidden rocks and dirt on a disturbed site.

Trunks with diameters measured in feet lay prone in conditions that would have shortly reduced a pine log to pulp. But they remained solid, demonstrating the strong decay-resistant properties that make cedar so valuable.

Into the mill

Working in the cedar-shake (hand-split, tapered roof shingles) mills gave me perspective into the anatomy of a knot and how the branch and stem wood interacted, long before I saw the drawings in Dr. Shigo’s “A New Tree Biology.”

Using an absurdly perilous, hydraulically powered “splitter,” the 24-inch cedar blocks were split into boards one-half to three-quarters of an inch in thickness. An ability to read the wood grain for defects and inconsistencies was essential for efficiency. The sawyer then passed those boards through a comically large, equally dangerous-looking band saw to create a tapered shake.

The inherent dangers were obvious, and being paid for piecework created a competitive environment that favored speed over safety. Fingers, hands and feet were indiscriminately severed, mangled and crushed. It became evident that self-preservation and situational awareness would be key ingredients to keeping my anatomy intact.

Back to tree care

I lost the brakes within the first 10 minutes of purchasing my first vehicle, a 1963 (or so) Dodge D-100 pickup, a precursor of future events. Remarkably, that $200 gem endured several cross-country trips and was my first “work truck,” in that I worked on it a lot.

I traveled back and forth between coasts for the next few years, and spent some time working for my former employer, Ray, keeping my climbing skills current. Changes in the tree care industry seemed minimal, but chain-saw technology and safety greatly improved in the 1970s when chain-brake and anti-
kickback devices became the norm.

The climbing line was still tied directly to the D-rings, leaving a tail to tie a taut-line hitch onto the working end. My saddle still had no leg straps, and I had no hips or gut at the time. It would occasionally slip up to my armpits, giving the appearance of a man trying to escape a pickle barrel. The resulting infamy, courtesy of my empathetic peers and mentors, was a dubious bonus.

No blocks, slings, carabiners or friction devices were employed during removals. Rigging lines went through crotches and then wrapped around the subject tree’s trunk or that of a nearby tree to create friction during lowering. There were issues. Tree crotches, ropes and skin were damaged and burned. Unplanned ground-worker ascents up a tree due to miscalculations (OK, ignorance) of wood weight and basic physics were not uncommon.

Unfortunately, safety was still not taken seriously. Larger firms had implemented SOPs that required use of PPE, but in the world of small-time tree workers, it was a “live free or/and die” mentality. There may have been PPE on site, but to use it was a choice.

There is no defense for my younger self. I apparently knew everything back then and acted accordingly. I would begin to wear PPE more regularly, but often could not be bothered. The same confidence that would propel me through challenging situations could easily shift to arrogance that could kill me. God looks after children and fools. I was not far removed from the former and well on my way to the latter, so at least I had that.

U.S. Forest Service gig

Back in Washington, I spent some time planting saplings in logged areas, crawling around the steep terrain while jamming a monoculture of saplings into the scarred ground at 5 cents a pop. That’s 1,000 trees to make 50 bucks. The scenery was often breathtaking, punctuated with occasional views of Mts. Rainier, Adams and St. Helens. But unless I condescended to making a few hundred trees disappear now and then, the job was financially untenable.

Looking for some stability, I turned to the U.S. Forest Service for my next gig. I worked on a fire crew whose main task was performing “controlled” burns to reduce the debris, or “slash,” left over in clear-cut areas.

I learned how to drive large vehicles and use power equipment, rode in a helicopter and on occasion cut down burning trees. I participated in creating large infernos with napalm, and then putting them out. Twenty-two and invincible, I was feeling my oats.

It soon came to my attention that my paygrade was being held in check by a lack of educational experience. Seasonal recruits, in or just out of college, were being similarly or even better paid for their work efforts than my ignorant ass. I had nothing against these individuals. But it was painful to be compensated less than people who had not even mastered the “controlled-stumble” technique, essential for moving through steep, brush-choked terrain.

So, it came to pass. The writing that had been on the wall for years was evident throughout the area. The cedar was gone, except in the protected areas of Olympic National Park. There was seemingly no industry or plan in place to prepare for this inevitability. The prospects for the future looked grim. I would return east and seek an education.

Moving on

I cannot express how grateful I am to have spent time in the park. I lived in a small community of cabins grandfathered within the park boundaries that would soon be left to decay. With no television or radio, we made our own music and explored all the wonders the park had to offer. There were magic mushrooms, naturally available in the lush and vibrant environment; serendipitous, or deliberate? Born from cow pies in livestock fields, we would hunt them at night, avoiding the attention of the local farmers.
In March of 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted, about 125 miles southwest of Quinault. While effects from the blast were mostly felt to the south and east, ash still rained from the sky. Soon after, a group of us climbed 4,500-foot “Colonel Bob” to get a better view – a 15-mile roundtrip, “difficult” hike that we did in a day wearing sneakers. That would be my last memory of my time there. In a few months, I would head across the country again, this time in a 1966 VW Bug. The goal: an education in arboriculture. The plan: no plan.

References

“The Road to Consultanthood: Musings of an Antique Arborist,” TCI Magazine, February 2023.

Howard Gaffin, BCMA, RCA and Massachusetts Certified Arborist, is owner of Gaffin Tree & Landscaping and a member of TCI Magazine’s Editorial Advisory Committee. This is the second in a series of articles sharing an appreciation for some of the changes the industry has seen over the years.