ABSTRACT
In the beginning loggers believed they were stewards of the earth who had found their Eden. Standing on the mountainside near Mod Creek in the Sweet Home district of Willamette National Forest in the spring of 1971, Tom Hirons watched the yarder, a machine that looked like a mammoth fishing rod, pull logs up the steep hillside to the loading dock. Nevertheless, it had been a busy week. Hirons's loggers had come in right after the cutters had gone, leaving the trees lying like corpses after a battle, neatly arranged side by side, perpendicular to the slope of the mountain. It had taken Hirons and his crew three full days to rig the skyline. Finally the tramway was assembled. "Cork boot fever" is what they call the love of logging. And Hirons and Robertson had bad cases of the disease. Like most in the business both men — Hirons the logger and Robertson the cutter — loved their work.
