People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1893 — LUMBER REGION “CRUISERS.” [ARTICLE]

LUMBER REGION “CRUISERS.”

Discomforts and Danger Met by Men Who Hunt for Valuable Timber. The typical cruiser of the northwestern pineries is the natural successor of those courriers des bois, or rangers of the woods, whom Irving so graphically describes in his “Astoria.” The rangers of those days roamed the same woods in search of furs and peltries that the land-looker traverses to-day looking for valuable timber. Each calling requires hardihood, skill in woodcraft, and a commercial instinct upon which to test values. There is the same willingness to forego for long periods the pleasures of social life, with the same inclination to boisterous excess when back amid friends again. The discomforts of the land-looker’s life, as , described by Scribner, try the soul as well as the body. In summer comes the plague of sand-flies, mosquitoes and gnats, and sweltering heat and tainted food; in the winter, the numbing cold, the camp lost, and the night passed in storm and darkness pacing to and fro, lest sleep and more than sleep may come. The snow melts in the neck, and cold drops go trickling down the backbone; and then there is the plunge through the treacherous ice into the frozen stream. Feet become crippled, frozen, and every step a pang. When the snow is wet and the snowshoes load up badly, the strings which bind them to the feet are thongs of torture. During one of these trying trips vows are made, sealed with shivering oaths which shake the tops of the loftiest trees, that never, never again, will the swearer be such a fool, etc., etc,; but, like the shipwrecked sailor, necessity and habit soon send him back to new hardships and fresh trials. As to personal danger, there is little in woods ranging, and that results mainly from isolation. From wild animals it may be said that there is absolutely none. Yet the cry of the lynx and the wildcat sometimes startles you, and the howl of the wolf suggests the hair-lifting stories of boyhood days. As to bear, they are as much afraid of you as you of them, and if you do not run they will.