Logging Roads

Everywhere throughout the forested country of the mid-central states wind the almost forgotten trails of the loggers of the past, trails that now in many places are almost obliterated, grown over with grass and short brush, hemmed closely on either side by stands of second growth timber. But from the air these old roadways can still be seen lying like a soft grey spider web over the land.

Not long ago, I visited a new logging country where they are still taking out the logs by the old method of sleigh and team. It was a cold morning, 30 below, and I could hear the screeching of the steel runners as they sped over the iced trails down the hills to the streambeds.

I stood to one side and saw the horses with the steam rising above them, the lumberjack skinner sitting astride his dangerously swaying load. I heard his wild calls as he careened around a bend, wondered what would happen should a chain break and that tremendous pile of logs break loose, saw the arrival on the level flat below and the swift unloading at the landing.

All that went on all through the northern states some fifty to one hundred years ago and those old roadways are still in evidence, roadways for all those who wish to travel through the new woods country.

To the skiers, these roads are invaluable, for they mean that cross country trails can be found wherever they wish to go. I know several close to my home, beautiful trails that lead up and down the hills, through swamps and across the valleys, invariably picking the finest routes for travel and grades that are superb for slalom. I sometimes think as I come down some of those grandly winding trails from the ridges to the valley floors below that the old lumberjack swampers must have had skiing in mind when they cut them out. How else could they have gauged to such a nicety just how much room and speed you need to do a Christiana or a Telemark?

To the hunter for grouse or deer, they also mean much, for the partridge still come to them for gravel and for the succulent clover they need for greens. The deer too have learned that feeding is good along them, that they are convenient trails for travel, that on them they invariably find their way to water.

To the trout fisherman, those individuals who are always searching for the headwaters of streams, they are a godsend, for only by following the old logging roads can they reach the back country. What follower of the elusive speckled trout but who remembers long hikes through the dewy brush of some old tote road, and who hasn't caught a good speckle beneath the timbers of some long-forgotten logging bridge spanning a creek?

We regret the passing of the big timber, but we do have the loggers to thank for a system of primitive forest roadways that gives us a chance to travel on foot, by snowshoe or skis through the hinterlands that otherwise would be closed and inaccessible.