To: longnshort who wrote (5077 ) 7/11/2013 3:56:15 PM From: ManyMoose 3 RecommendationsRecommended By
Read Replies (1) | Respond to Here's my tree story: Dad, Bill, and I went camping over near the Brushy Fork of the Lochsa one summer when I was a junior in High School. We went up a logging road and pitched the umbrella tent at the end of a logging spur, just above the cutbank. I can remember the site today as clearly as if it were yesterday. There were clumps of beargrass blooming all around, and spruce trees. We could see very well in every direction from our camp as a result of the forest being cleared by logging. We were on the north slope, and had a clear view of the stream and canyon to the north, down stream to the east, upstream to the west and uphill to our backs in the south. I remember trying a little trout fishing with Bill in the small creek below our camp. Dad called us when it was time, and we returned to camp for lunch. We were standing around camp when we heard the most awful roar, not like a freight train coming our way but about the same intensity and tempo. Looking across the canyon to the northeast, we saw spruce trees being blown over, as if a giant were dragging a huge lawnmower through the forest. They popped and clapped like thunder as they split from stump to crown, or were simply uprooted. An evil wind was afoot, pushing a wall of trees down before it from east to west, all on the opposite side of the drainage we were camped in. The air was still at our camp, but Dad said we had better tighten up the tent as a precaution. I jumped up the cut bank to our tent, and was busy staking it down when the wind started coming back down the drainage in the opposite direction on our side. Suddenly: “David! Look out!” Dad yelled. There was as much alarm in his voice as I’ve ever heard. I looked up behind me and saw a large spruce tree falling my direction. Whirling around, I took one step off the cut bank. “David! David!” Dad said. I remember that so clearly because by this time I found myself on the ground in the logging road with the giant spruce tree on top of me. I remember whirling around; I remember Dad’s voice – nothing in between. The next thing I know he and Bill were pushing branches aside to find me under the tree. Dad feared that I was a goner, I’m sure. But for the grace of God, I would have been. I should have been. Dad and Bill were surprised when I spoke to them as they pulled the branches off. They found me on the ground and helped me climb out. I was unhurt. Completely unhurt. Nobody had much enthusiasm for camping after that, but I think Bill and I went fishing again that afternoon. I remember feeling a little nauseated. That’s all the ill effects I suffered. The words of a Marty Robbins song from the sound track of the movie “The Hanging Tree” [1] played over and over in my head for the rest of the year, and from time to time to this day. “To really live, you must almost die, “And it was just that way with me.” Ever since surviving that mountainado I’ve wondered if God has some great thing in store for me. Something that I must do or achieve. Something that only I can do. It’s a bit like the theme from that movie “Simon Burke” in which the title character, a youngster with severe physical developmental handicaps, is convinced God has something great for him to do. You’ll have to watch the movie to understand what I’m talking about. [1] Gary Cooper played Doctor Joe Frail in that movie, which was based on the novel of the same name by Dorothy M. Johnson. I went to the premier in the old Fox Theatre in Missoula. Marty Robbins played his song on stage, and Dorothy Johnson was in the audience.
