Scaling Tall Timber

Scaling Tall Timber

By

Dave Folsom

This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, or incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, localities, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

Excerpts from this book were previously published as short stories Scaling Rexford in The West Wind Review 1992 and as Running with Moose in Running with Moose and Other Stories 2010

© Dave Folsom 1992, 2010 All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, copied or used in any form without the expressed permission of the author.

ISBN 978 1 453 75789 5

This book is dedicated to my wife, Sandy, who after fifty years still puts up with me.

Remember friend as you pass by

As you are now, so once was I

As I am now, so you shall be

Prepare for death and follow me

From the tombstone of Jeremiah Mahoney

Died June 24, 1885

49 yrs. 2 mos. 2 ds.

Canyon Ferry, Montana

Author unknown

CHAPTER ONE

Les sat across from me, his legs dangling under a buckskin lodgepole, scowling at his notebook in silence. His anger hadn't subsided during the morning and continued into our lunch break.

"You're crazy, man," he said to me, finally setting down the notebook and digging in his cruiser vest for lunch. Deep lines creased his forehead. "What you want to leave for?" When I didn't answer, he continued, "Who the hell am I going to drink beer with?"

We lounged in the cool shade of old-growth conifers deep in the Montana wilderness, work sweat running like rivers from under our aluminum hardhats. A breeze touched my skin, feeling good as I chewed cold roast beef. The long hike up the steep mountain had sapped our young hearts. Jumping from log to log following a preset compass line and measuring methodically between sample plots, the heavy forest and the heat made me breathe in short desperate gasps. The forest canopy shielded the hot late May sun, leaving us in a dark moist shelter of giant western red cedar and limby Englemann spruce. My companion wore his cruising vest like mine, heavy with compass, pencils, notebooks and tree measuring instruments over a flannel shirt and black logger jeans. We both wore heavy logger boots, heavy soled, tight-laced and calf-high.

Les picked our stride up the mountain, pushing my soda-cracker ass at near a dead run while dragging a two-chain-trailer tape for measuring slope. He didn't express his displeasure directly, but his killer pace hinted at it. When we finally stopped, he glared at me while standing in his new Buffalo calks, rocking back and forth on a wind-fallen alpine fir, daring the bark to slip. He towered over me, mouthing subtle queries like: "Why Sutton's Landing?" or "You know, don't you, that there ain't nothing there?" He'd been after me all morning since I'd told him about the transfer. He was right, of course, and those were the very reasons I'd accepted.

When we stopped at noon he wouldn't let up. The truth was he didn't need me to drink beer; Les could do a respectable job on his own. Lester Dermont at twenty-five stood a couple inches shy of my six foot-four, kept the all the local breweries in business single-handed and stilled the hearts of most women between six and sixty. He wore whiskers long, but neatly trimmed, dark black like his hair. On Saturday nights, Les drove the hundred miles to Butte with his Canadian friends to play semi-pro hockey. I only called him Lester when I wanted to get his goat. Tough as the hobnails on his calf-high logger boots, his left cheek carried a three inch puck scar from mouth to ear to prove it. He liked everyone to think he was western born and bred, but I knew his secret. He learned to play hockey on a park pond in his home town of Nutley, New Jersey.