Chapter 46: Shock and Awe

The lunch call came none to soon, cutting and trimming saplings is physically demanding work and the three of us needed a break. Naturally I had joined in on the work, standing around watching would have to wait until I was an old man; Brin took care of guard duty for me.

Harvesting saplings isn’t as easy as it sounds, occasionally you’ll find a large stand you can thin out but you can’t take all of them and there are never enough of the size you need in a single stand. We ended up with piles of cut and trimmed saplings all up and down the near side of the creek.

We didn’t use the chain saw in order to avoid un-necessary wear on the chains and battery, I only had one back up chain and a couple of batteries. All of our advanced technology had an End of Life somewhere in the near future with zero chance of replacement parts coming available anytime in the next two centuries. Mind numbing thought.

So the work was done with axe, hatchet and hand saw. As I looked around at some the the larger tree’s I’d need to fall I ran my new favorite fantasy through my head: “If only I had known I was coming here, I would have bought such and such instead.” It was a pointless and harmless mini-day dream but it was also the sort of day dream that had led me to purchase lottery tickets to begin with. I had never actually thought I would win the lottery, those tickets just gave me something to day dream about while I parked on the Southern California freeway every afternoon as part of my daily commute.

My logging arsenal was pretty sparse, I only had what you would need at a camp site or to remove a medium sized downed tree from a trail. I had a logging axe, a woodman’s axe, several hatchets, a maul/sledge, a machete or two, a cant hook and a single man cross-cut saw. I’d figure out when and where to use the chainsaw going forward but I knew it was best saved for emergencies.

Lunch was a welcome break and the food was good as always, not as much meat as I would have liked but meat was fast becoming a luxury; our bacon wasn’t going to be replenished from a magical bacon bush down by the creek and I couldn’t see a sausage tree anywhere. Story time went to Esther and her version was entertaining as well; kids see everything from a different perspective and that came through in the story also. Holder was fascinated and even asked a few questions about these far off places, he was still a young man and hopefully not completely set in his ways.

School came next and this was a new one for Holder as also; watching him sit there and struggle with the alphabet was eye opening. We took literacy for granted in our future-past, this young man had a long way to go. As at the start of every learning session we reminded them that freedom came from knowledge and the more you knew the freer you were. Yup, philosophy type shit but the absolute truth was that the greatest treasure I had was that digital library; knowledge of unequaled proportions in that day and age.

The afternoon work started with a quick accounting of our new pole inventory; our harvesting had ranged down the near side of the creek and made it about a quarter of the way around the near treeline. We had managed about fifty good poles in our first pass out. Obviously this was the easy stuff, with easy access that didn’t require us dragging a fresh cut sapling through fifty yards of forest or fording the brook.

I decided that we should collect and sort these for use in “Immediate Projects”, things such as the roof of the root cellar and fence posts for the meadow. It was time for a little show of technology and I thought a truck might be just the thing.