Page 1 of Protected By the Lumberjack
Chapter One
Honey
The woods are dense and it's hard to tell what direction I'm going in, or what time of day it is when I can't make out the sun's position above me through the canopy. I can still hear the river in the distance, and that's the sound I follow, praying it leads me to civilization.
Overhead, I hear another helicopter. They came too late. I'm too far into this forest to go back and the tree cover is too dense for anyone to see me waving for help. At this point, it's really go big or go home-- I'd prefer home. I just don't remember where that is.
It's become my go-to way to distract myself from the hiking during the days, and my go-to way to distract myself from the cold and sounds of the forest around me at night; trying to remember. Anything.
My name would be a good start.
I'm not sure what I look like, but I can tell my skin is pale. Too pale to believe I'm the sort of person who spends a lot of time outdoors. The kind of skin that was quick to sunburn and become wind-chapped from days of staying close to the wreckage I crawled out of, waiting for rescue.
The curves I had when this ordeal started seemed to confirm my suspicions about not being an outdoorsy type, as do the blisters on my feet and the aches in my body-- or maybe that's just par for the course for people who survive plane crashes. I don't know. I've never been in one before-- I don't think.
When I was still near the plane, I was counting the days. I got to ten before realizing no one was coming and decided to take my chances on hiking out. Since then, I have no idea how long it's been. Another ten, maybe. Fifteen?
Fresh water is easy to find, at least. Food? That's another situation. In the plane, I found the usual collection of snacks you'd take on a road trip; bottled waters, salted peanuts, beef jerky, chocolate.
Not enough to keep a person fed for several weeks, but apparently enough to keep one alive. Seeing as how I'm still here.
When I came to, it took a long time to understand where I was and piece together what I saw. A small plane, the only other person in the plane with me that I could tell had been the pilot. A woman still strapped in her seat, her body folded in angles that made it clear it had been broken in places that humans don't survive.
Behind me, in the cargo area, everything was charred and burnt. When I finally got it together enough to find a way out of what was left of the plane, I saw it had collided with the side of a mountain. High above tree line. The pilot-side wing was a memory lost between the fuselage and the rock it rested on.
I thought there must be GPS on the plane. Some kind of instrument that would be sending signals back to some kind of software somewhere. Someone would come looking for us. Someone would find me.
But I couldn't stay in the plane. Not in the burned-out cargo area and definitely not in the crushed cockpit with the pilot's body.
Even with rationing carefully, my scant food supply is nearly gone. I'm already running on nothing but some instinctual will to survive.
I saw a bear yesterday, but it had no interest in me. At night, I hear wolf song, but it's distant. I don't know much about what else could be out here: poisonous snakes, insects, Bigfoot, illegal pot growers with rifles and shovels who are more interested in protecting their profits than concerned about hiding bodies.
Somewhere ahead of me I hear a noise. A noise that stands out in the usual sounds of the forest that I've grown accustomed to. Something distinctly human. Rhythmic and steady, sharply reverberating in the otherwise serene woods.
I'm so tired. The breeze kicks up with the waning light, and my sweat-drenched clothing takes me from too hot to too cold. I'm so tired of being so cold at night.
My feet fall into step with the sound and I follow it like I'm in a trance.
Carver
When my brothers and I agreed to take on this project, we didn't have a solid grasp on what was going to be involved.
The Placer Canyon blaze had just devastated thousands of acres, leaving a charred scar across the high land that's hard to stomach.
It's our job to take care of the forests that cover these mountains My brothers have eaten up by guilt over it, and I guess I must be too. That's the only reason I can fathom why I'd have agreed to take on the fool's errand of trying to thin out the dense old growth of the Weeping Wilderness.
There's no way we can do the whole thing, of course. We knew that going in.
There's just too much of it.
Not to mention the difficulty of getting crews in here to work.
We can't get the heavy equipment up here, everything has to be done by hand. The boys can fell the trees easily enough with chainsaws and axes, but getting the timber down to the road is a whole other kettle of fish.
Turn-over among the seasonal guys is higher than usual on this project and I don't know if it's the work, or being camped in this fucking forest for weeks at a time.
Because, to be honest, this place is pretty creepy. There's something primordial about it. Once you get a few hundred yards inside the tree line, it's easy to forget the outside world even exists. And I am well beyond a few hundred yards in.
