My boss will stare at the weather websites for hours, hoping for a change, a shift, any small thread of hope to grab onto. “Call Joe Cupo, call Kevin Mannix, get them on the phone I need to talk to them!”

Living on the edge these days, hoping for a freeze, praying it doesn’t rain. Watching the forecasts for a slight dip in the temperature, anything, anything to lift our spirits and keep the crew working.

We have been battling the mud now for weeks just to get the wood out. It tears at a logger’s heart when Christmas comes and goes and we still haven’t had a solid freeze. “I have nine guys looking at me to give them something to do” Tom says, and then he has to send them home. He sends them home because Mother Nature is a force to be reckoned with and when her mind is made up, not even Joe Cupo or Kevin Mannix can do a single thing about it. So we wait, and pray.

The first time I faced the mud, my boss happened to be away in Georgia. The rain was coming down in sheets and our job in Topsham was turning into a somewhat of a challenge. “Make sure that stream stays clear” was the order from Atlanta. As Master Loggers we are held accountable for our treatment of the environment, and water quality is one that we pay strict attention to.

So in my bright yellow slicker I ran through the woods to check the stream and see how things were going. Twenty or thirty years ago, these things wouldn’t be an issue. Get the wood out no matter what. With third party accountability, and strict attention to the environment our jobs are much more challenging and decisions hinge on a lot more factors than our logging forefathers had to deal with.

I had read my manual on Best Management Practices for Forestry: Protecting Maine’s Water Quality a publication of the Maine Department of Conservation’s Maine Forest Service http://www.maine.gov/doc/, which my company adheres to. I was about to learn that it just isn’t about water quality, it’s about stopping the job and sending real people home when they want to work. They are real people who have bills, families, tuitions and all the same financial stresses as the rest of us, except that they are at the mercy of the weather.

Our Master Logger Certification requires us to follow BMP’s which, when complicated by the weather, can bring the harvest to a halt. When the wood stops, the crew stops, and the money stops.

The mud, the rain and the warm temperatures are still affecting our lives. On our current job we built a temporary road to get the wood out, and we are still struggling to keep the work flowing. So each day we pray for the temperature to drop, and for Mother Nature to smile on the loggers.

Last year at this time I was thankful for the unseasonable warm weather just like the majority of the population, and now I pray for cold. I pray for cold for all the loggers who are struggling throughout the state to keep their businesses going, to keep their crews working and maintain a tradition that is so much a part of the history of this great state we live in.

E-mail this entry to a friend