Hard-working donkey

This is the old steam logging engine, retired, passing the days, with an occasional bit of volunteer work as befits an old retiree, in the gardens of the Campbell River museum. I stopped by the last time she (Why do we refer to engines as "she"? But we do.)  was fired up, to listen to the old familiar grumble and clank. Now she rests, again.

Empire Steam Donkey

(The roof is a modern addition; in service, the donkey would have sat out on a hillside, exposed to rain and sun. Mostly rain, here on the islands.)

The donkey engine was built in 1916, worked hauling logs off hillsides among the little islands on the east side of Johnstone Strait, and was abandoned there when her working days were done, in 1948. She moldered away there for 30-some years until the museum rescued her. (From the museum article.)

Walking through well logged off, now recovering, woods the other day, we came across several sections of steel cable protruding out of the ground. Back then, it didn't seem to make sense to pay to clean up a work site; I've seen cables and loggers' spikes half-buried in Oyster Bay, too.

Modern logging sites are full of heavy machinery; back in the day, the only machine would be this donkey engine. I watched them logging beside my house, in the early 50s. A barge towed by a small boat brought in the donkey engine. Men swarmed over the site like ants armed with axes and big two-man saws, human-powered. An anchor point was selected, a sturdy tree, and the donkey engine was hooked up to it. Then she winched herself off the barge, and up the hill, sliding on those two log skids. Loggers selected a strong tree, to serve as a spar tree; once trimmed, cables and pulleys were attached to the top. Then cables from the donkey were attached to cut and trimmed logs, and she winched them down off the hill, and into the salt chuck*. This was strange to see; the logs stood on end, held by the cables dangling from the spar tree's cable, and "walked" down the hill and into the water.

It was a noisy operation. There was always the chug-chug-chug of the donkey, the thunk of axe blades, the rattle of cables, the shouts and whistles of the men. "Timber!" they shouted when a tree was about to come down. The whistles were for signals to and from the donkeyman. Those cables were as dangerous as the falling trees, the widow-makers; sometimes they would snap, or the anchor point would let go, so the whistles were warnings for all the men on the site.

And then it was done; ours was a small hill, and at the end of the summer the donkey engine winched herself back down the hill and onto the barge and was towed away, to the next chosen hillside.

*"Chuck" is a borrowed word from the indigenous peoples of the west coast of the island. I was sharing a hospital room with a local Nootka woman (properly called Nuu-chah-nulth, but we used Nootka back then) and she undertook to teach me a bit of the language. "č̕aʔak", which sounded sort of like "chu-uck", she said, meant the ocean. I couldn't quite pronounce it, and when I thought I had it right, she laughed."No," she said, "that means river water". Salt water is č̕aʔak." It sounded the same to me. I never quite managed to hear the difference. (She taught the doctor how to say, "Good morning," and then laughed and laughed.)

Here's the museum page on logging history.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Este es el viejo burro de vapor, ahora jubilado, pasando los dias con un poco de trabajo voluntario, como acostumran los retirados, descansando en los jardines del museo de Campbell River. Pasé por el museo la última vez que la pusieron en servicio, para escuchar su voz, despertando mis memorias de otros burros, otros tiempos. Hoy duerme otra vez.

Foto: el burro de vapor, "Empire".

(El techo es moderno; en sus dias de actividad, se quedaba sin protección alguna del sol y de la lluvia. Por la mayor parte, aquí en las islas, era lluvia.)

El burro fué construido en 1916, y trabajó entre las islitas que bordean el lado este del Estrecho de Johnstone, y lo abandonaron allí cuando ya no les servía, en 1948. Y allí se quedó, a solas, por unos 30 años, hasta que el museo lo rescató. (Véase el artículo del museo.)

Caminando el otro dia en un bosque talado repetidas veces, ahora en dias de recuperación, pasamos por unos pedazos de cable de acero medio enterrados. Hace años no les parecía importante a los madereros dejar el sitio limpio cuando se iban. He visto porciones de cables y clavos de madereros en la tierra en Oyster Bay, también.

Los sitios de tala de madera en estos dias están llenos de maquinaria pesada; en la primera mitad del siglo veinte, la única máquina sería el burro de vapor. Los observaba al lado de mi casa en los primeros años de la década de los 50. Un barquito jalando una barcaza trajo el burro. Un grupo de madereros se arremolinaron sobre el sitio, al parecer como un hervidero de hormigas llevando hachas y sierras "crosscut". Se localizó un punto en donde fijarse, un árbol firmemente establecido, y le ataron un cable desde el cabrestante del burro, que entonces se puso en marcha y se arrastró desde la barcaza hasta el cerro, arrastrándose sobre esos dos troncos que le sirven de sostén. Los madereros escogieron un árbol fuerte y alto, llamado "spar"; una vez que le hubieran cortado todas las ramas, le fijaron varios cables y poleas. Luego, ataron los troncos ya cortados y desramados al cable que venía del burro y los levantó y los trasladó hacia el mar. Observar esto era algo extraño; los troncos se paraban, colgados del cable del spar, y "marchaban" bajando el cerro hasta caer en el agua. (El "salt chuck"*)

Hacían mucho ruido. Siempre se oía el rugido del burro, los golpes de las hachas, el traqueteo de los cables, y los gritos y chiflifos de los madereros. —¡Timber!— gritaban cuando empezaba a caer un árbol. Los chiflidos eran señales desde o para el operador del burro. Esos cables eran tan peligrosos como los árboles que caían (creadores de viudas, los llamaban); los cables se podrían romper o su punto de fijación se podría desconectar, así que los chiflidos servían de advertencia para todos los hombres en el sitio.

Y ya habían terminado. El nuestro era un cerrito pequeño, y al final del verano, el burro se arrastró de nuevo bajando el cerro y se subió a la barcaza. Y se fueron de allí, camino al siguiente cerro escogido.

*"Chuck" es una palabra prestada, tomada del idioma de indígenas en la costa occidental de la isla de Vancouver. Yo compartía por un tiempo un cuarto en el hospital con una mujer de la tribu que entonces llamábamos "Nootka". (La palabra correcta es "Nuu-chah-nulth".) Ella se divertía enseñándome algo de su idioma. "č̕aʔak", dijo, quiere decir "oceano". Sonaba algo así como chu-uck. Yo no alcanzaba a pronunciarla correctamente, y cuando creí que ya la tenía, ella se rió. —No — dijo — eso quiere decir agua del rio. Agua salada es č̕aʔak. — Para mí, eran lo mismo. Nunca llegué a distinguir la diferencia. También le enseñó al doctor como decir "Buenos dias". Y ella se reía y se reía.

Forlorn hope

 Logged-off emptiness, and four seed trees.

Standing tall.

This method of harvesting a forest supposedly jump-starts the reforestation of the area. I don't know how effective it is.

The seed tree reforestation method leaves healthy, mature trees with a good cone crop (usually 6 to 15 per acre) in the existing stand to provide seed for regenerating a new stand of trees.  ... It is not unusual for a forest manager to leave the seed trees for wildlife or aesthetics objectives. (Thoughtco)

However, with so much of Vancouver Island logged off, and with climate change upon us, I'm wondering how long it will be before the forests re-establish themselves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Un terreno denudado de su bosque, con cuatro árboles dejado en pie para proveer semillas para la reforestación.

Se dice que este método de cosecha de nuestros bosques ayuda a la repoblación forestal. No sé si funciona.

El método de reforestación por medio de árboles semilleros deja árboles maduros y sanos con una producción óptima de piñas (normalmente de 6 a 15 por acre (0,4 hectárea) en pie para proveer semillas para regenerar un nuevo bosque. ... No es raro que un silvicultor deje los árboles para la fauna silvestre y consideraciones de estética. (Thoughtco)

Sin embargo, con tanto de la isla Vancouver ya desnudado, con el cambio de clima que ahora se presenta, me pregunto cuánto tiempo tomará para que se reestablecen nuestros bosques.

Pool without a name

Vancouver Island has some impressive scenery; towering snowy mountains, green valleys, shimmery lakes, rocky beaches, craggy cliffs. And then there are the in-between spaces. The left-over logging scars. Land stripped of its evergreen cover, slowly returning to life.

Like this one.

Nameless slough.

Even bathed in sunshine, this terrain has a forlorn, bedraggled feeling. Lonely and hopeless. And yet I am drawn to these sloughs; I stop often to look at them.

But appearances can be deceptive. The slough is full of vibrant life. And it has its own story.

At one time, this was dryish land; there's a small creek running through, but the land was dry enough for those dead trees to grow. There was a forest here: look at the stumps left by the loggers.

Logging changes the water patterns; the trees no longer retain the water until it soaks in. The moss dies under the onslaught of unfiltered sunshine. Water pools where before it oozed. Leftover trees die, with their roots rotting in the soggy soil.

Or maybe the change was hurried along by beavers, damming and backing up a tiny creek.

Google map view. Dark green is second-growth forest. Light green and brown; logged off more recently. Logging roads meander around; they brought in trucks and machinery.

Shallow water, grasses and water lilies.

The new pool makes a habitat for water lilies and grasses. At the edges, hardhack and willows settle in. And there will be frogs. And snakes hunting frogs. And in the summer, dragonflies and blue darners meadowhawks and water striders. Muskrats and beavers. Small fish. Turtles, maybe; racoons, of course.

And there are always ducks. A small flock flew away, quacking, when I got out of the car. There will be swallows chasing mosquitoes, redwing blackbirds nesting under the shrubbery. Hawks hunting smaller birds and assorted small mammals.

See? Not lonely at all.

The water is shallow: a foot deep or so, if you don't weigh much more than a frog. For us, the muck underneath is soft and deep. I fell in once, decades ago, looking for frogs. The water on that little pond was a hand's depth deep; I went down and down to waist deep in the mud. Lucky my brother was there to help pull me out!

(Aside: it's a long, long walk back to camp in dripping jeans and squelching, muddy shoes!)

Pointing at the sky

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nuestra isla de Vancouver goza de paisajes bellos: montañas altas, cubiertas de nieve, valles verdes, lagos tranquilos, playas arenosas, precipicios abruptos. Pero también hay esos lugares olvidados, los espacios perdidos. Cicatrices hechas por la tala de árboles, terrenos desnudados, sin su vegetación original.

Como este. Un cenagal en un valle que antes llevaba bosque. Tiene un aspecto triste, abandonado, sin vida. Sin embargo, algo aquí me llama; me paro frecuentemente para mirar terrenos como este.

Pero las apariencias engañan. El cenagal está lleno de vida. Y tiene su historia.

Antes, aquí había bosque; se ven todavía los troncos dejados por los madereros. Y esos árboles ya muertos crecieron altos antes de que el agua cubriera sus raices y los mató.

La cosecha de madera cambia el sistema de aguas. Ya no hay árboles que retengan el agua hasta que penetre lentamente; ahora corre. Y el musgo, expuesto a los rayos sin filtro del sol, han muerto. El agua se estanca en los lugares planos.

Y tal vez los castores ayudaron a apurar este cambio, haciendo sus presas  en un riachuelo pequeño.

Pero se ha formado un nuevo habitat. Aquí llegaron los lirios del agua, pastos y arbustos, entre ellos la espirea douglasii con sus flores color de rosa, los sauces, las totoras. Habrá ranas. Y víboras cazando ranas. Y libélulas y sus parientes, y los insectos que caminan encima del agua. Habrá castores y ratas amizcleras. Tortugas, tal vez. Pececitos. Mapaches, claro.

Siempre habrá patos. Cuando llegué a las orillas de este lugar, una familia de patos se levantó y se fue, quejándose. Habrá golondrinas cazando mosquitos. Pájaros alirrojos haciendo sus nidos debajo de los arbustos. Halcones cazando pajaritos y mamíferos pequeños.

¿Ya ven? No es nada solitario, sin vida.

El agua no es muy hondo; apenas unos 30 centímetros, si eres una rana. Pero si eres humano, el fango debajo del agua es muy suave, y te hundes. Cuando era chica, hace siglos, caí en uno de estos cuando estábamos buscando ranas. Apenas había una palmada de agua, pero me hundí hasta la cintura en el lodo. ¡Por suerte mi hermano estaba a la mano para ayudarme!

Rusted Ghosts

Long, long ago, back in the 20th century (it seems strange to say that now, to me who spent most of my life in that century) when logs were logs, when the saws in the woods were manned by two lumberjacks each, perched on supports jammed high into the stump, where the 12-foot-long saw could reach across the width of the trunk, the felling of a tree was only the first part of an arduous undertaking. Somehow, those monsters had to be hauled out of the dense BC bush, loaded onto trains or trucks, and dumped in a handy harbour. From there, they could be boomed or loaded onto barges and towed to a mill, usually some distance away over treacherous waters.

Google map: Comox Harbour, Goose Spit, Royston.

One such handy dumping ground was Comox Harbour, a deep river mouth with a spit partway across the opening, creating a safe place to store log booms. A logging railway came down the coast to Royston, on the far side of the harbour.

Starting in 1911, steam locomotives hauled logs from logging camps throughout the Comox Valley to the Royston log dump. The logs were sorted into booms and towed to more protected waters on the inside of Goose Spit. From there, the steam tugs towed the log booms to Fraser Mills in New Westminster. (Royston Seaside Trail website)

The ocean here can be stormy, and the Royston log dump had no protection. In 1937, the logging company started to sink derelict ships to form a breakwater. It was the age of the steam engine, and the old sailing ships could not compete; they were among the first to be riddled with holes and left to rot on the tide flats.

The Riversdale, a steel-masted Cape Horn windjammer, launched 1894, stripped and used as a barge before she was finally sunk. The bowsprit is all that remains of the superstructure.

From the sign at the trail.

The first member of the Royston ghost fleet was the five-masted auxiliary lumber schooner Laurel Whalen. Built in 1917 by Cameron Genoa Mills Shipbuilders in Victoria, the Laurel Whalen had a brief spell as an ocean going cargo ship before being converted to a floating cannery in the 1920's. Eventually she outlived her usefulness and was brought to the breakwater site in the 1930's. (Forgotten British Columbia Facebook page)

The Melanope and the Orotava. The Melanope is the oldest of the sailing vessels, built in 1876.

A world traveller: Liverpool to Australia to Asia to Royston, hauling everything from coal to rice, later stripped down and used as a log barge.

Then came WWII.  When it was over, many of the old warships were scrapped. Several ended up in the Royston breakwater.

The Prince Rupert, a WWII frigate.

In her active days.

In all, there are 14 ships rusting away on the old breakwater: "... three windjammers, three frigates, two destroyers, three steam tugs, one (maybe two according to some accounts) harpoon boat, and two barques (a kind of “workhorse” of the 19th century sailing ships)." (atlasobscura)

Another view of the Melanope and the Orotava

320 feet long, four-masted. Captured from the Germans, WWII.

When I arrived, the tide was low, but not as low as it gets at other times. I could see fragments of other ships, barely above the surface. Some, though, even at the lowest of the low tides, are now so rusted and rotted that they have almost disappeared.

On the shore, the remains of an old rail heading out to sea. A slipway, maybe?

For more complete info, see the book The Ghost Ships of Royston, by Rick James.

Related: about the breakwater at Oyster Bay: Rust in Peace. 

Wild forest floor

I grew up on Vancouver Island, in the northwest coastal forests, dense, lush, and silent, only marginally tamed along the edges. Across a creek that ran under my bedroom, a creek we crossed on a fallen tree, crawling (me) or dancing (my brothers) according to our sense of balance and scorn of danger, and through a hollow log that traversed a salmonberry thicket, we came out onto a fern- and moss-blanketed cathedral: unlogged Douglas firs, yards across at the base, towering high into the rainy clouds overhead. My brothers would race on through; I tended to find a dryish log and sit there a while, just listening.

On the Ridge Trail, I followed a sort of trail off the main trail; a deer track, maybe, looking for mushrooms. There were none visible, and I didn't want to disturb the moss, but stepping carefully around mossy roots and huge ferns, I got a brief flashback to my childhood wanderings. This was the forest floor I knew of old.

Healthy forest, mixed evergreen and deciduous, probably third-growth, after two or more loggings.

The trees on the ground are as essential to the health of the forest as the standing timber; they provide nutrients and shelter to new growth and the animals that make it their home. The moss on top soaks up the rain, releasing the moisture slowly to the thin layer of soil underneath; these forests sit on rock, sometimes barely under the surface duff. Without the moss, they would dry and burn with the first lightning stroke.

Evergreen fern.

It's not an ecosystem hospitable to humans, my brothers notwithstanding; any human trails are made with chain saws, constant monitoring, frequent traffic. Abandoned for a year or two, they disappear.

Sometimes I wonder at the early explorers who made their slow way across the continent, following ridges like this one, rivers like the one in the valley below, clambering at every step over slippery logs, stumbling into hidden holes, sinking through wood that seemed solid and turned out to be mostly wet rot, trying to find a dry, flattish spot to sleep after an exhausting day. Or at today's firefighters; at least they have helicopters and chain saws, but it's still a daunting task.

Much of Vancouver Island is logged off now, sometimes repeatedly. Entire mountain sides lie open to the sun and wind, the moss dry and brittle, the ferns dying. With the added burden of a warming climate, they are a bonfire waiting for the first match. I'm not looking forward to our next fire season.

Down a logging road

I can't resist an unmapped road winding off into the bush.

Logging road. A sign near the highway warns of active logging Monday to Friday. Nobody there on Sunday afternoon; perfect for an explore.

A couple of kilometres in, I found logging slash, and a view of distant mountain tops.

I grew up around logging slash, hardly noticing it. In recent years, with the vast increase in machine logging, stripping much of our rain forest of its ancient cover, I've come to detest the thought of it. But here, the old familiarity returned, and I was able to see the beauty even in this ravaged forest, so busy now re-establishing itself.

Among the trees, I can always hear their quiet conversations. Here, on a Sunday afternoon, with the whispering evergreens far across the graveyard of their old friends, it was so silent that the buzzing of a fly echoed down the road. The air was spicy, smelling of cut wood and browning ferns. A few tiny white butterflies danced around the crumbling stumps. Huckleberry shrubs, still young, sprout from the crevices at the tops of nurse stumps, and around their feet, the first green shoots of next season's covering crops, fireweed and ferns, elderberry and blackberry, dot the ground.

I turned over fragrant slabs of wood and strips of bark, each one decorated with the tunnels and shredded fibers left by burrowing grubs.

A beetle's drawing of Don Quixote's nag, Rocinante?

Salal is evergreen and hardy, resisting even the tread of men and machines. With last year's dead ferns. The roots are still there, healthy and ready to sprout, now that the ice is gone.

Logging is still going on, farther into the mountains. Here, recovery begins.

A bit of logging camp history

In 1923, a pair of loggers set up a small logging camp at Oyster Bay, just north of the outlet of the Oyster River. The land is flat here; streams and creeks dawdle down to the coast, stopping here and there to make sloughs and flooded meadows. Roads across the wetlands were corduroy; cut logs laid across the road bed (or swamp bed), sometimes with sand or gravel fill. It made for a bumpy ride in those old logging trucks.

The bay itself is more a slight dent in the coastline, open to the waves and currents of Georgia Strait. Better a semi-bay for mooring log booms than none, and the flat surrounding land was a good place to lay out workers' cabins and logging machinery.

Looking inland from the tip of the breakwater. Flat river bottom land ahead.

The flatlands had other residents in those first years. Around the depression years, a relief camp housed young men otherwise out of work. They cleared land, worked on the roads; the cordwood road was gravelled; there were bridges to build and repair.

In 1938, a dry year, sparks from small logging operations set off dozens of small brush fires in the Campbell River - Courtenay area. Oyster Bay is in the centre. One fire grew into a raging blaze that eventually consumed 470 square kilometres of Vancouver Island Forest; at the end, over 2000 men fought it, hopelessly until the rains came.

When that was over, the Forestry department hired 40 men to cut a road through from Courtenay to Campbell River; they also replanted trees that had been lost in the fire.

The breakwater, today. Rocks and rust. Simpson's ship pieces.

As World War II was getting underway, the need for lumber grew. Al Simpson, of the Iron River Logging Company, bought the old logging camp and built a causeway out into the bay to enclose his booming ground. As added protection from the huge waves kicked up by winter storms in Georgia Strait, he sunk parts from dismantled ships as a breakwater.

Rusted ladder. One of Simpson's collection?

The causeway was here. Looking straight east across the channel.

And now, we have a real bay. Coastal currents have been bringing in sand and debris, piling up along Simpson's causeway at first, then on the added breakwater, changing the shape of the shoreline, even building bird habitat.

Three pilings left over from the causeway, with flying kildeer.

Google map. Oyster River at the bottom, the wide-open "bay", with the modern, enclosed bay at the star.

Tomorrow: MacBlo, the war's remnants, and today's hulks.

When trees were huge

One hundred years ago, Vancouver Island was covered shore to shore, high-tide line to high-tide line, with forest. The trees were huge; 30 feet around or more, 6 feet across. An old family photograph, now lost, showed my aunt, about 5'5" tall, standing in front of a downed trunk; it loomed over her, at least a foot wider than she was tall.

The weekly mail plane, Vancouver Island west coast, 1950s. One small settlement (Hungerford's place, I think, now gone). Forests still go to the high tide line. My father's photo.

Not so today; a Google Earth fly-over reveals huge logged-off patches, a network of logging roads, the brighter green of opportunist deciduous trees, and remains of old logging operations. Most of the forests now are second- or third-growth trees. Logging trucks carry bundles of skinny poles, matchsticks compared to the old logs, some of which were, singly, a full load for a big truck.

Log on truck trailer, 1944. Vancouver Archives collection.

Zeballos, a logging town on the west coast. 1940s. A few bare patches are visible on the left. When I knew it, in the 1950s, a large area of hillside had been logged off along the surrounding coast.

GoogleEarth view, mid-island. Darkest green shows unlogged areas.

Loggers were at work here since ancient times; the native peoples cut trees for houses, heating, canoes, and tools. The invading Europeans brought metal axes and saws, and used the wood for their own houses, boats, heating, and eventually power. (Some boats were run by steam power, with wood-fired boilers.)

In the 1920s, large-scale industrial logging started to change the map, including the creation of Oyster Bay. (continued tomorrow.)

Rotting cement, upside-down tables, and a handful of limpets

From Campbell River to the south, the highway winds along a coastal plain, dotted with farms, towns, resorts, and light industry. To the north and the west, the situation changes. A terrain map shows what my Mom called an upside-down tableland; many tables, all with their legs in the air.

Google maps: terrain, mid-section of northern Vancouver Island. Campbell River is just off the map, to the lower right.

Here, the roads follow river valleys, keeping as far as possible to low ground, out of the grip of ice most of the year. And here, human settlements are small and widely scattered. Sayward is "large", with 400 people. Kelsey Bay holds 120. Woss, there in the centre of the map, is home to 200. In between, beside some of the lakes, there are a few campsites and inns; a house, a cabin or two, and nothing more. Near the northern tip, where BC Ferries has a terminal, Port Hardy boasts a large population of 4000.

"Port Hardy (population: 4,000) is the last bastion of civilization in the remote and wild north end of Vancouver Island." (Yes, they actually said that. Here.)

Along this coastline, even where there is access, human influence is attenuated. Shipping; cruise ships, fishing boats, log booms, and barges pass, leaving their wash and smoke; logging trucks roar by on the highways; and, of course, there are all the general effects of climate change. Apart from those, land and marine animals and plants go about their business mostly unobserved.

Kelsey Bay is one of the spots where we have left a deeper footprint. It used to be the southern terminus of BC Ferries' Inside Passage, before the road was pushed through to Port Hardy. The bay is full of rusting hulks, crumbling cement, abandoned wharves, interspersed with the usual activities of a northern port; a small-craft harbour, a log dump, parking lots full of machinery and trucks.

Old BC Ferries' ramp supports. High tides reach to the top of the exposed metal.

View from the end of the road, towards Mt. H'kusam. With marina, and several rusting hulks.

On the tiny beach, besides the dead sea urchin, I found shreds of a variety of kelps; the big bull kelp, a curly, wide-bladed kelp, and others too torn to identify. Rockweed is well-entrenched, growing firmly on the cement boat launch; I pawed through it, looking for small critters, and found beach hoppers. On the rocks, mostly too big or too wedged in to flip, barnacles and limpets waited for the water to come back.

Empty limpet shell.

An unusual pattern. This one's alive, and holding on tight.

Limpet on a stone.

Row of mask limpets (Tectura persona) on a rock. With two slipper snails, and another, possibly a ribbed limpet. Lottia digitalis. I had to move a rock to get at these.

All along the coastline, around the marina and the rotting remains of abandoned equipment, the tops of a bull kelp forest floated, their holdfasts still attached below.

The tide is low; at high tide, only the floating blades will be seen.

Keeping a few metres shy of the rocky shore. The water's pink, looking south, towards the setting sun.

From the old BC Ferries' dock, looking north. "My" tiny beach is in the shelter of that big rock on the left. Bare rock marks the high tide line. I was actually trying to take a photo of a loon, who, of course, dived just as I pressed the shutter. There's an eagle on one of the trees, though.

I won't be heading farther north from here until spring; I've been warned of an icy hill, just beyond the Sayward Village turnoff from the highway. Meanwhile, I pore over maps and aerial views, planning, planning.

Of boom boats and donkey engines

On a hot summer's day in Powell River, there is no better place to be than in the forest and near the shore. For example, on the Willingdon Beach trail.

The trail used to be part of a railway that hauled logs to the mill at the north end of town. This track was in operation only from 1910 to 1918; afterwards, the rails were removed and the trail was used by mill workers living to the south, in Westview. Now it has become a popular easy walk for local residents, with shade, access to beaches along the way, interpretive sign, native artifacts among the trees, and old logging equipment rusting quietly in the shade.

I had to stop and examine each of these machines. They brought back vivid memories. I grew up, so long ago, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, seeing the loggers working up and down the hillsides along the shore; I remember the chugging of the donkey engine, the clatter as a log danced down the hill, the shouts of the fallers ("Timberrrrrrr!"), the rumble of loads of logs tumbling into the water to be hauled away in big booms. So different, these days, with the operations on mountainsides far away, the hills shaved down to the dirt, the logs (so much smaller these days - mere toothpicks!) picked up in mouthfuls by big-toothed monsters.

Boom boat.

These little round iron tugs push and pull around logs many times their size, maneuvering them into position in the booms, wallowing around half swamped, it seems, with the water washing over the decks . Laurie wondered how they floated; they look too heavy, but they enclose a lot of air in the deep hull. I found a video showing one at work. Fun to watch!

Minimalist pilot house.

Controls of a large caterpillar.

I don't know what this contraption did. It looks fairly new.

A winch.

On our west coast mountains, in the absence of machines that could carry logs, they were attached to steel cables, dragged into an upright position, and winched down the mountainside. The winches also dragged machinery into position.

The donkey engine.

Every operation had a donkey engine, in those days. It was a steam boiler on a sled, powering the winch which it used to drag itself up the mountainside. There, its cables were attached to the top of a spar tree, the tallest, sturdiest tree on the site. The cables ran down the hill to the dumping wharf. Harvested logs dangled from the high cable as they made their way down to the water.

Logging was a labour-intensive industry then; the slopes swarmed with men, cutting, trimming, and fastening logs, clearing brush, tending the few machines. Wood, even though we were surrounded by it, was still costly, in terms of man-hours. But our houses were smaller, lumber was recycled; none was wasted.

Two of the signs near the donkey engine were interesting:

That donkey engine weighed 16,300 pounds!

Thanks, Margy, for the suggestion. I loved this trail!