Abi's Dinosaur Pony. CHOICE. My Dad

I think about dinosaurs a lot, even just today when my nieces was trying to tell me the name of her My Little Pony I repeated the name and than asked her, “ Abi you named your pony Dinosaur?” At this point in my mind I was so proud of the distinct choice of my niece, but her brother stepped in to interpret. “ No, Star Chaser”. I settled down as I realized that Little Pony's should have names like Star Chaser, rather than Dinosaur.

Decision making is a curse and a excitement. The road to the future is paved with decisions and just for fanciful fun the road to the future is bright yellow as Dorthy and Toto's road to meet the Wizard. Changes come by permission. I sat and watched my oldest sister teaching her oldest son math principles. In my memory I can recall my own self learning geometry in high school. My mind slowly tip toed into my answers with a bit of insecurity. The phrase that the teacher would use as I described my present understanding of the formula was, “ Yes, you can do it that way or also this way.” My mind would than take on the new formula and begin to process it till it than became a routine that I knew with a sense of surety in my mind. Decision making in our lives feel the same way. We entitle this process as “Experiences”. We experience permission and than we own the environment given to us by that permission. The people that we love to write about are those people who grant themselves permission by the independent processing of their own mind. 

The story is about my Father, and my Uncles life. They were young men working as Loggers in Northern California. My Uncle as a “Cutter” and my Father a “Hook Tender”. Cutters worked alone and go in front of the crew of men, while a Hook Tender works with the team. Cutters, inspect and fall trees. Cutters use techniques to fall trees in specific areas so that the Choker Crew and the Yarder Crew can pull the Logs to the Landing and load them to trucks. If time is wasted and logs are not accessible for the crew to gather, than money is wasted. A Cutter works alone, because he must walk and fall trees free from the distraction or the danger of other people around him. Many things can go wrong in falling a tree, the top of the tree hitting another tree can lift the bottom of the tree and swing it back towards the cutter. A tree hitting another tree can fall another tree if that tree is dead. The term, “ Widow Makers” describe large limbs that break and fall from a tree.

By a prompting my Dad felt that he should leave his current work with his crew on the one side of the hill to look for Randy. To follow this instinct my Dad had to walk up the hill and walk to find Randy. There was no certainty that my Dad could even find the area that Randy was currently working in. Cutters do not work near the present work site where the crew is gathering up the fallen logs, they move from place to place inspecting trees that have the most profit margin. My Dad found Randy crushed with a log on top of him. Randy's tree that he was falling struck another tree and caused a chain reaction. I don't know how to relate the actual size of the tree. In my minds eye, I have always pictured it as a tree that would have gone up to my chest, at least 4 feet to 5 feet in width. I picture this way because my Dad said his greatest fear was that if he cut the log off of Randy, that Randy would die instantly from the rush of blood back into his crushed body. There was no physical way to move the tree off of Randy. Randy was pinned underneath and could not be pulled out from underneath. My Dad cut sections from the log in the width of Randy's body with his chainsaw. Surgeons use scallops to save lives and my Dad used a chain saw. Randy was fine, his body was not crushed and my Dad humbled by the experiences of listening to the call he felt to look for Randy.