Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [61]
The winter of deep snow, now ending, no doubt had been a blessing to the mice and other small mammals that had lived safely under the smooth white blanket and among the winterberry leaves, insulated from the cold and, more important, hidden from the famished owls that watched and listened from above. Of course, in the natural cycle of things, the temporary respite from overhead danger would mean a good year for the foxes and fisher cats come spring. Then it would be their turn to prosper.
The loggers who had cut over the hillside before I bought my piece of land had brought their equipment up an old logging trail that followed the line of the ridge behind the cabin. Theirs may have been the fourth, fifth or sixth cutting since the first settlers’ axes felled the stands of virgin timber on these hills. I often walked the trail because of the view it afforded at its highest point to the hardwoods covering other hillsides to the north and Kezar Lake to the east, and because it nearly always showed the tracks of moose and coyotes. The logging crew had done its work selectively and with care, taking out most but not all of the biggest trees and leaving the medium and small trees standing, including oaks and maples that eventually would grow into valuable timber. The woods looked opened up but not ravaged. It was not a clear-cut. It had been responsibly done.
I was curious about what the harvest had yielded and drove to nearby Greenwood, a small town between Stoneham and Norway, to talk with the owner of the logging company that had done the work. His name was Wayne Field, and he had been Rick Rhea’s partner in the enterprise of buying, dividing and selling the land. Field, forty-nine, is a tall lean man with smooth muscled arms, wide shoulders, fine straight hair, a goatee and wide glasses. I had no trouble believing he could boss a logging crew. He lived in a log home with a stunning view across a broad valley with a distant meandering stream down its keel. He met me at the door and offered a chair at his kitchen table. I sat down. He gave me a long stare. It would be an understatement to call him intense. He fixed his eyes on me; his face was expressionless; the seconds passed.
“Are you a liberal?” he asked.
There was nothing for me to do but answer honestly that I was a liberal, at least in some respects.
“Teachers are often liberals,” he said. Another stare. “Liberals are wrecking this country,” he said. “They encourage people to sit on their fat asses, eat potato chips, watch television, get obese and take handouts.” He paused. “Hardworking people have to pay for this.”
I said I wasn’t in favor of handouts.
He had to work hard for everything he had, he said. “Liberals are idealists. It doesn’t work.”
It was my turn to pause. I thought of the high-quality way he had cut over the hillside. “Liberals,” I said, “can be idealists. So can others. In a way, you’re an idealist.”
“You’re giving me smoke and mirrors,” he said.
And so it went for about a half hour. He was dead serious and his intensity did not waver. Eventually, I asked him about the hillside. He lightened a little.
“Your land over there wasn’t quite ready to be cut,” he said.
“We did an improvement cut. We removed the lower-grade trees. That’s how you grow a nice forest. I don’t want to be known as a liquidator, taking everything that you can and putting it on the market to get what you can for it. I believe there is a balance to be had.”
Field’s company is Central Maine Logging, one of the largest in the state south of Bangor. He employs twenty men and cuts one hundred tons of wood a year. He owns ten cable skidders, five grapple skidders, three chippers, three slashers, one feller buncher and seven pulp trucks. This is about six million dollars worth of heavy equipment. To