December 03, 2002
Tuesday - 9:15 pm

Our Human nature has some interesting quirks. Fear of one thing will keep us from moving ahead into other good things that come along in our lives. Thirty years ago I was logging on Kuiu Island for Pentilla Logging. I was the rigging slinger and Gary was the climber for the high-lead side. He spent time each day hanging blocks up in tail trees to provide lift for the lines at the back of the units. Our landing man was John, an exuberant man, who always wanted to come out and rig a tree. His persistent begging paid off and we invited him to climb a tree and hang blocks one day after lunch.

Things went well at first. He climbed seventy feet up the tall spruce, sawed off a few limbs, hung the two blocks, strung haywire through them, and was finished. The problem arose when he froze up and would not come down. We tried calm persuasion but John was petrified to the tree. We loudly offered the fact, salted with fitting explicatives, that he was holding up the whole job, but his fingers dug further into the bark. We threatened to come up after him and drag him down the tree, but his voice began to quaver in fear and he actually started to cry. So Gary started the saw and put a face in the tree in preparation to saw it down.

This activity produced screams from John, " Gary, you wouldn't do that, would you?" I was even a bit concerned at Gary's action, but figured it was worth a try if my friend John would come down. He did not budge. We gave him one minute to make his move then Gary jerked the rip cord on the saw and actually began making the cut that would fall the tree. The roar of the saw drowned out John's screams. The tree began to make ominous cracking sounds and was starting to move in the direction it was aimed. I had my eye on John, hoping he would choose to overcome his fear.

He chose well. His fear of death overcame his fear of heights and down the tree he came, almost beating his tears to the ground. We reassured him that we would never have actually finished falling the tree, sent him back to the landing, and blew for the rigging.

 

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