By Star Childs

At Great Mountain, we have an old truck with a fading bumper
sticker that reads, “Have you hugged a Logger today?” In part, the
message is poking fun at the label for environmental activists
opposed to timber harvesting, who are often known as “tree
huggers”. But the message is dead serious when one considers the
challenges faced by timber harvesters or “loggers” everywhere.
Felling trees and extracting the logs from all manner of terrain
routinely ranks at the top of the list of most dangerous professions,
and no one knows this better than the loved ones whom a logger
leaves at home each day when he heads to work. For them,
hugging a logger is no laughing matter. Each day, it may be the
last chance they get.
A recent television series on the History channel, “Ax Men”, has
been following the weekly progress of four Pacific northwestern
logging crews in a challenge to meet their contract obligations and
“get the cut out of the woods”. As I watched the reality footage of
these hardworking men, I found myself thinking about our own
challenges here in the woods of Connecticut and the men whom I
engage to work for Great Mountain Forest.
Regardless of where loggers ply their trade, they utilize much of
the same equipment and powerful machinery to meet the demands
for forest products from an ever increasing human population.
They face wild and unpredictable swings in the markets for the
wood they produce, especially now with one of the steepest drop-
offs in housing and construction starts in recent memory.
Their high insurance rates would give any businessman pause and
their high horsepower machines require a substantial amount of
diesel fuel to get the logs to market. With diesel prices at an all
time high and lumber values falling, due in part to global
competition and customer preference for tropical wood, it gets
increasingly hard to earn a decent living, especially since one risks
life and limb to do so.

Our forests in the northeast need management, but the men and
women who have the skills to do this work will be less willing to
take those financial and physical risks unless we place more value
on their services. Renewable energy derived from wood has long
been a desirable alternative to the use of imported fossil fuels, but
delivering renewable energy to homeowners and industrial users
presents the same risks and dubious rewards to the loggers.
Like the real life stars of the “Ax Men” series, most loggers choose
their profession for the lifestyle it affords. Independence, fresh air
(laced periodically with saw fumes and diesel exhaust) and the
satisfaction of leaving a well-managed forest in their wake lure
loggers into their chosen line of work. Most would not be as happy
in any other line of work.
Our forest here at Great Mountain once helped to fuel the local
iron industry on the backbones of hardworking colliers who felled,
cut and stacked several hundred thousand cords of wood for
making charcoal.
The forest has grown back haphazardly over the past century, and,
in many places, now stands mature, well stocked and once again
ready to serve our society in any way possible: from energy
production to framing lumber or fine quality hardwood, to
scrubbing man-made carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or,
simply, as an important habitat for any number of wild creatures.
As forest landowners, we can apply for lowered tax assessments
for our working forests, but in so doing, our forests should also be
maintained and kept productive for the benefit of the local
community and regional economy that provides those tax
incentives.
Most importantly, we should quietly applaud the hard work and
human effort that goes into harvesting, regenerating and
maintaining sustainable forests for future generations. Hug a
logger if you ever get the chance, or at least smile and wave, as I
do, with a thumb’s up sign, as he trucks his logs to market.