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Before the sweet time of Smuckers and Kraft jam was dreaded. The flood stages of lakes and rivers were used to move wood to mills and markets. But whether we do so using natural waterways, steam locomotives, diesel trucks or electric airlifting there will always be consequences. 

I can and do regret the mess made of some river and lake ecosystems moving logs, but to be honest I’m not keen on giving up toilet tissue or factoring indirect costs to charge on paper products. I suspect Reader readers would not like paying for indirect costs. I rather doubt the Reader would be here at all if we were to be environmentally conscious and pay full freight for our privileges. 

A thing I like to remind myself is: Even superb ideas have consequences. There’s no escape. What I consider fair or reasonable is almost sure to be skewed or self-serving whether I care to say so or not. 
Considering myself a humanist, it was a difficult meal to eat seeing the at variance sway of humankind. 
Let’s say we propose housing for all. Great idea. What kind of house? Urban penthouse or isolated lake cabin? Are there enough high rises and lakes to go around? 

And what if a person wants neither? Farm home, underground housing, mobile home or castle? 
We don’t want the same things in life. Some will wisely argue “What about love? Don’t we all want to be loved?” Fine, but what loser gets stuck with me? I suspect there’s little to no level where we want the same thing from rising time, to menu, to clothing or occupation. 

Humanists and globalists and unifiers in general face the ornery complexity of us. We the damnably complex people. I’ve said before I believe we dodged a cannon ball when the U.S. revolution settled on liberty. 

Why? Just look how things ran further afoul when the French added equality and brotherhood to the mix. Look how well the New Soviet Man (that sexist?) worked out, or rather didn’t. Even the staunchest believers in the ideal general good lived in fear of the next interpretation and whether or not they’d make the cut. 

 Continuing on using logs for easy reference, we might call out saw logs and pulp logs (sticks), and don’t forget the single or multiple-use boom log. These logs are not the same things in purpose, and let’s not forget species. Different. More difference involved than you need get into unless-until you’ve a need, such as happened to me when I got involved making cedar shingles. 

Not one cedar tree did I cut down or purchase. My partner (he with the major machinery) saw my use as fit for dull grunt work. A friend? No. A friend wouldn’t try to kill me via labor of the “fetch” type. 

We scavenged wood yards for bolts (or slugs) of cedar sufficient to make shingles. Sometimes an entire center-rot log came out way. Lucky us. How many pieces of salvaged wood do you need to make a suitable load? Partner’s answer was always far more than what I’d have been OK with. 

Frankly, I’d rather have been abed, having fun or even sleeping. There was no rest in making shingles. First you found and prepared your bolts, load them then unloaded so you could get to work. 

Twice or more my puny weight, partner did the sawing. Did you know a shingle mill saw table tilts so that each cut is thicker one side than the other? Back and forth. There’s little there for intellectual curiosity. 

Same goes for gathering and stacking the cuts which then have to be edge cut, producing lots and lots of kindling pieces to gather and bundle for sale. Is there a standard size or price for a bundle of kindling? 
If we were to charge by the number of steps or how wore out I felt scrabbling for bits of wood coming from the mill no one could afford any of it, shingles or kindling. And yet, I liked doing it. Why? Mystery? 
Not if you add in tackling each step in a way that made sense in the then and there. There was no universal new-model form. You had to make things up as you went. No central planning. Our shingle making was a form of gleaning. A bang on my door early some Saturday morning got me out of bed to “go make shingles.” I went.  

 See how far away from simple logs we are already? Work of any sort is a sort of connection with life’s elements. You’ll see around farms and many rural homes collections of what appear to be junk but are also leftovers from tasks similar to or related to survival level gleaning. Important bosses don’t glean the scrap piles. I’d say they don’t see the value there or the consequences of trying to harvest that value. 

Work is one of the teachers we can’t learn from without dirty-hands work. Irony. You can’t know it without doing it. Claiming otherwise is false as Kosher or Halal pork. 

Shingle world continued here and there for some years. Partner decided we needed a Cat 10, tiny little thing, to pull a dray so we could gather more material. He sat on the Cat. I did the hoofing. 

One crisp afternoon while examining a nice looking cedar butt I waved partner “Up here.” As he chugged forward Cat 10 hit a hummock, tilted and began to roll. “OH, don’t do THAT,” was my thought, but it did it. Rolled right over, disappeared down a slope. 

Didn’t want to see, but thought I’d best run over to identify the body surely crushed when kissed by Cat 10, which by the way continued to run, chuffing away. There was no body. Well, there was, but it was standing and looking a bit chagrined by sidehill sabotage. 

Wasn’t much point saying “You’re alive,” so I didn’t. I doubt he wanted comment, instead saying “Get the comealong,” needed to upright the Cat. 

Trotting to my task I said over my shoulder, “Might want to shut the Cat off.” 

I didn’t see the dirty look, but it was there.