Attribution: Joshua Mayer from Madison, WI, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
.jpg){kind=link}
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper coming late to the competition for the toughest walk to school–uphill and into the wind both ways, amends his entry to include the log walk into time.
This did not involve just any old log: it was three huge sections from one of the original giant white pines. The tree had obviously been downed with lumber harvest in mind and then something went awry with those plans and the three huge logs began to age like the skeletons of history. They lay covered with deep moss and fungi in a pasture along the route to the country school and it was a ritualistic detour for the keeper to leave the road, climb up onto the first log section and walk the length of all three before rejoining his impatient sister back on the road.
It didn’t dawn on the keeper until much later when he learned of the dramatic history of the great Wisconsin pine trees that he had been treading on one of the spectacular era corpses as part of his walk to school.
Later, as his country school days ended, the keeper learned that a neighbor who owned a sawmill had harvested the big old logs and found the resulting lumber to be “Sound and beautiful!” in his words.
As the keeper tells the story to Phyllis, he will try, perhaps in vain, to control his emotions and not get carried away over his memories of his walk-on-the-logs to school. Phyllis will understand and maybe volunteer her experience of getting to school from the Canadian lumber camp.
Comments