Yesterday, I drove to my cabin and helped my neighbors, Patrick and Mary, clear dead standing and downed timber from the upper part of their parcel. Most of timber was lodgepole pine and not particularly large in diameter. At the same time, the work proved exhausting due to the inclines we worked and the tangles of downed limbs and trees we had to scramble through.
After a couple hours of
wrestling logs, we loaded my neighbor’s truck with some of the five-foot lengths
we had staged along their road. We
hauled the logs down to their camp near the creek. The logs will later be cut to smaller lengths
for firewood.
We unloaded the truck and then spent
a few minutes sipping at Cold Smoke beer and chatting alongside a campfire.
Before I sat near the fire, I peeled
off my coat, gloves, and ear protection muffs and piled them on the ground
nearby. Toward the end of our break at
the fire, I looked down to my pile of clothing and protective gear and noticed
one of my gloves was missing. Glancing
around, I spotted my neighbor’s dog, Bristol, fast asleep on the ground
alongside the glove she had lifted from my stuff.
I pointed the dog out to my
neighbors and then walked over and snapped a picture. The dog didn’t so much as twitch.
“I wonder what was in your
glove that put her out like that?” my neighbor Patrick teased.
“That’s easy,” I answered. That glove was filled with hard work today. Made me tired, too.”
Working the Mountainside
Truckload of Wood
Bristol and My Glove
—Mitchell Hegman
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