One day we were having lunch with Russ and his first wife Brenda on the banks of Lake Cushman at the foot of Mt. Washington in Washington state. Curt left the group and was absent for some time. I turned and there he was by the lake. I snapped the first shot.
We all hung around while Curt spliced together a surprisingly sturdy raft in a short amount of time. We'd made rafts before but nothing with the durability of this one. I watched and snapped pictures in amazement as Curt drifted further and further away. I lost sight of him as he rounded a pointed several hundred yards away. I took the last shot. We all walked away shaking our heads but totally unconcerned for his safety.
A few months later we would be living at Lake Cushman at the state park. For free rent we worked every day except weekends. He'd work one day and I the next. The main job was cleaning out the fire pits at the campgrounds and cleaning the bathrooms. One day the ranger and I made a "glutton" which is a wooden mallet. This reminds me of a typical day for a ranger in the dead of winter at Lake Cushman.
I followed him into the shed and he took the old mallet, slammed it hard against the wooden work table and declared that it was time for a new glutton. So we hopped into the truck and went to a ranch house with considerable acreage and a large mountain beside it. It was tucked into a valley thick with green trees. As beautiful a spread as you could wish.
We hopped into the strangest vehicle I'd ever seen. It was like a Jeep without the sides. It had four wheels and a square body to fit the passengers and a cargo area in the back. It had one purpose - to lug up and down the mountain. It had power to spare and gripped the mud as if it had claws. No ordinary truck could have performed such a feat.
This road hugged the side of the mountain with nothing but drop-off on the other side. About a mile up we came across a raging waterfall with a hundred foot drop. Between the lush vegetation surrounding us and seeing that water come over the ridge and plunge down to the rocks, the beauty was simply mesmerizing. So incredible was this sight that the image seared into my memory instantly and remains to this day. I knew instinctively that that is why he brought me up there. Not to make a silly glutton but to show me this beauty.
But then we stopped on a steep incline of road. The open space to our left was still there but was now thick with hard wood trees. The ranger (forget his name) handed me the chainsaw and said, "cut some wood off one of those trees for our glutton." I thought, "you've got to be kidding!" In front of all these people? I'd never used a chainsaw before. Not to mention we were in the midst of a drizzle and everything was soaking wet. The hillside itself was almost verticle to the road. I'd have to climb down to the trees, stand on an incline, and control a killer chainsaw which I'd only watch others use. This was insane. The one thing I had going for me was that I had watched very closely as others used chainsaws. Mentally I was prepared for this moment but not for the conditions, and the audience.
As they stood just about twenty feet away, I made my way down the hill and proceeded to pretend to know what I was doing. I gave the rope a jerk and the thing started right up. I eyeballed a thick branch and cut both sides using the base of the chain-saw. By using the base I knew that that would prevent kickback and the thing from going through my forehead. We ended up with a perfect sized chunk of wood, nice and round for our new glutton. I turned off the motor, headed up the hill, returned the chain-saw to the back of the vehicle and we took off down the hill. Hardly a word spoken.
Most days were not that interesting but always enjoyable. Hardly anyone came around the campground so cleanup was always light. Curt worked one day and I the next. While he worked I explored the forest or hitchhiked into the little town at the bottom of the road. A little old lady picked me up once, and then again another time. She asked me if I needed work and I said I did. She said she'd also picked up my friend the other day and verified that my story of why I was there was true. Both Curt and I worked for her alternating, always chopping up wood for her fire. She always made cookies for us, hot and fresh from the oven. Her name was Doris Micklen and she drove a four-door Ford. Some years later Curt went back there and noticed the car gone. Most likely she had died.
For additional money we picked chanterelle mushrooms in the forest. There were always people along the road set-up to buy them. These mushrooms that grew wild in the rain forests of Washington would end up in Europe and sold for $4 an ounce. We brought in multiple pails full and got about a buck a pound. Still, living near the forest we made a killling.
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