Dirt Work (6 page)

Inside, we ate a quick breakfast. Steeped hot drinks, packed our backpacks, topped off the saw and filed the chain, fitted the scabbard around the edge of the felling axe. Bears, snow, whatever. Trail crews work no matter what, something we're proud of.

An hour into morning, a quarter mile from the cabin, we realized the futility of it. The snow was heavy and wet, burying fallen trees so that sinking the saw in where the tree should have been was like slicing through the frosting on a cake, the bar invisible beneath snow. Through safety goggles and thick snow, we could hardly see. As Kent bucked one tree, two fell around us. The late snow, accumulating on branches with roots in thawing ground, was too heavy for the trees to bear and they dropped hard, the way tired kids who've been up too long finally collapse.

In a wet, dark forest with saws running and trees falling, the three of us called it a day. This was nearly unprecedented—in five seasons, I had had perhaps half a day where inclement weather was stiff enough to warrant truancy (then, it was lightning at a high alpine work site, our hair fuzzed out, metal tools tossed aside in the brush.) This day off wasn't hard to justify. Visibility was shit, sawing sketchy. At this rate, we'd have to clear the trail again anyway, and there was no other task to do instead, the drains all covered in snow, the tool cache organized, the cabin clean from last season's closing-up hitch. Reasons aside, why turn down a free day in such a strange and quiet world? We stashed our tools and hard hats, opening senses to the unexpected snow. We hiked a while together before Kent, with wet feet and a sore Achilles, headed back to the cabin, promising hot drinks for us when we returned. After two miles, I turned around, my mind on the book I'd left beneath my sleeping bag that morning, and the hot chocolate Kent would have waiting. Gabe said he wanted to get to the clearing ahead, and he'd catch up. We parted, disappearing into opposite ends of the whiteout.

On the hike back, my noisy mind shut up. Walking in the woods alone, in the snow, in May, was lovely and weird—snow on green ferns, inches of melting white beneath my boots, the sway of quiet through branches. I forgot, as I often do, to call out, to yell,
“Hey bear!”
as is prudent when hiking alone. I forgot myself. Halfway back to the cabin, I saw a bear. Off the trail to my left, lumbering through the trees, snapping branches beneath its feet, a huge male grizzly moved, also alone, parting the snow in the air before it. Unaware of me. Had this one peeked through our cabin window? A stripe of white mapped its spine, flanks falling away like slopes off a high ridge, corniced along the top. I stopped, blood rackety in my veins. I watched the bear move in steady snow with an ambling poise, rolling to one side and the other like a graceful fat man in no particular hurry. Thirty yards away? I saw my hand stretched out in the air, separate from me, palm out, inviting in, warding off. Noticed, it fell to my side.

I didn't want to surprise the bear. It was too late to yell out without alarming it, and I didn't want to jar the stillness. I wanted to watch the bear, keep it in sight for the rest of the day in the snow. But really. I couldn't hike along parallel, risk surprising it suddenly. It would charge me if startled. It was so close.

I kept walking. So did the bear. A minute later it turned toward me, swung its square head, and paused. It wasn't a stop, exactly, just a longer moment between strides. Had it noticed me, or known I was there all along? The bear loped into the woods, disappearing from my view as if it had been erased. I saw its rump peppered with white, then nothing. Snow kept falling. “Hey bear,” I sang out when I started walking again.
Hey bear,
hey, I saw you, brown bear in a white world, so big how can you be so graceful, so close to me, so far away?

The next day, the snow had mostly melted and left trees down everywhere. We hiked to our stashed gear and cleared as far as we could, two on saws, one hauling brush, busting ass to absolve ourselves of the previous day's secret. We barely made it to the foot of Upper Kintla Lake, slowed by heavy steps in the last inches of muddy snow and tangled piles of trees to cut, one after another with barely any hiking between. We followed more bear tracks in the trail, half brown, half white, one set bigger than my hand, a second set much smaller. They preceded our path all day, sometimes veering off trail for a few yards, then joining us again, until, crossing a snow-covered meadow, we lost them for good. The tracks were fresh, from that morning, still crisp around the edges. Two bears together, probably a mother and a subadult cub. Not the curious lake bear, nor the lone male of the day before, his paws like snowshoes. We never saw the mother and cub that day, but they were there, watching for us as we watched for them.

A well-used wooden axe handle is smooth, almost soft, having absorbed the oil of hands. To properly care for a wooden handle over its life, use sandpaper on cracks that may cause splinters or blisters. Rub the handle with linseed or neatsfoot oil when it feels dry.
Treated as such, with the care you'd give a friend, an axe becomes a thing you can also rely on. The axes I've used for work have been communal tools, belonging not to an individual, but to the trails shop, to a certain crew, over many years. When I oil the handle of one of these tools, or feel it rotate midswing in my damp palm, I imagine all the people who held this axe before me, men and women who strapped it to their packs, hefted it over shoulders, felt its weight arc out from their arms. They are both teachers and witnesses, and the axe is what they pass on to me, wiping their sweat from its handle, placing it in my hands.

ROCK BAR

Usage
   A rock bar, sometimes called a pry bar, is an essential tool for trailwork, especially in high alpine areas where most trail structures—steps, retainers, culverts, walls—are made of rock, not metal, not wood. (Above treeline, the tiny gnarled alpine larch and Krumholtz spruce hold little architectural potential.) A rock bar is typically five feet long, weighing sixteen to eighteen pounds with a beveled tip.

Simple Machine
   A rock bar works because of leverage. Slide the beveled end under a rock, the curve facing the ground. With fulcrum in place, push down slightly on the handle and the rock will lift, your effort magnified. If the curve faces the rock, not the ground, the fulcrum is misplaced and any advantage will slip away. As with all hand tools, the rock bar asks for wise use. (A tool, like a word, can be used badly, its beauty rendered moot by carelessness.) Physics ignored, the rock bar is just a heavy stick.

Safety
   A fulcrum operates on the pinching principle, so careful monitoring of hands (in gloves) and toes (in leather boots) is a must. A rock bar is often used with more than one person, so teamwork becomes critical. Make sure everyone involved understands the big picture, each step in the move before it begins. If you don't know what's happening, or if you enter the scene late, please stay out of the way.

Weight
   A rock bar is made of tempered steel, with almost no flex even under great pressure. Its weight, though loathsome when hiking it on your shoulder, has a clearly apparent advantage when compared with a shovel, which, if used to pry, almost always snaps at the handle or bends at the head. A rock bar's weight is also handy when the tool is used as a drop hammer to widen cracks in rock or drive in a stubborn chock.

Comparison
   Things you carry over your shoulder that are heavier than a rock bar: the powerhead of a rock drill, a gassed-up 036 chainsaw, an axe with a full five-gallon Dolmar hung off the handle, a power brusher, a cluster of zip-tied rebar, a burlap sack of log spikes, a Griphoist. What's lighter than a rock bar: an empty 026 chainsaw, a rock rake, a shovel, a pair of skis, tent poles, an eight-foot two-by-six, a fishing rod.

Relatives
   Don't mistake the digging bar (or spud bar) for a rock bar—a digging bar is five or six feet long with a paddle blade on one end and a disk handle on the other, and unsupervised, a green laborer may grab it from the tool cache. The blade handily digs postholes, and the disk tamps down dirt, but the bar is too long and flexible for prying, and if you use it for rockwork, you're courting an iron fist to the teeth. A crowbar—some versions known as a wonder bar or cat's paw—has a curved claw for pulling up nails and removing joined beams or spiked logs, but is too short for rock use. Other steel bars have a squared-off end and can be used for tamping and battering, but the lack of a bevel will make them ineffectual tools for moving heavy things.

Common Injuries
   A bloody lip from a slipped handle or a crewmate who moves in an unpredictable manner; a strained lower back, when tempted to dead-lift instead of prying or rowing; split fingers or pinched toes, when a rock suddenly slips its fulcrum and finds its natural resting place; tarnished pride, when sometimes, at 125 pounds soaking wet, even with a rock bar's mechanical advantage, you've bitten off more than you can chew. Also, watch your crotch when lifting off a fulcrum. Never straddle the bar's handle. If it slips with you above it, you'll holler (female) or puke (male).

Chapter 2. Sperry: Alpine

(All I ever needed to know I learned above tree line)

The story of the Sperry Trail crew is the story of women. In a field where “boys” outnumber “girls” by roughly the same margin as in childhood sandlot baseball games, the Sperry district—one of the alpine kingdoms on Glacier's west side—was, during my trails tenure, run by women. I stumbled into this lineage my first season, following Reba around the district with a tool in each hand, trying to keep up with her nimble feet and constant stream of chatter. She seemed to me back then as salty as they came, a feisty woman with a dirty mouth who loved to ski and worked her summer job to support her winter habit. She tromped along taut ridgelines strung across sky and she told stories:
Abby built that retaining wall with a broken thumb. The Middle Fork guys climb peaks on the clock every single hitch! If so-and-so sharpens the saw, he still puts the chain on backward damn near every time. Once Danny got lost while he was taking a dump, fucking hilarious! If you tell we got the saw stuck twice on the same tree, I'll deny it!
Sometimes she complained, and when unsure of herself she could lash out mean, but Reba told on herself with at least as much fervor as she told on everyone else, a reflexive cackle that kept her just this side of gossip. She hoisted trails lore like a glass for a toast, and I was thirsty for it.

Other women were more peripheral than my first crew leader, but no less memorable. Sherri was barely five feet tall and could outdrink men twice her size; plus she could take apart and reassemble a chainsaw without losing a screw or e-clip, a skill I appreciated more once I'd lost a few myself. After law school, Sherri realized she didn't want to be a lawyer, so she started working seasonally to pay off student loans. I wouldn't be surprised if she's doing it still. Annie was smart and lithe with a handful of advanced degrees and a wicked sewing habit. She made costumes for a big-city opera in the winter and patched worn Carhartts with artistic flair. One year, she sewed hiking kilts for her crew, pleated nylon complete with Fastek buckles. Annie was quirky, with crushes on new boys every year, but was most faithful to her mountain bike, which she rode, fearless, leaving her dates in the dust with skinned knees, hearts pounding. Then there was Abby, a legend by the time I arrived. She'd been a crew leader for years, and she left Glacier my second season for a trails job in Alaska. Abby had the kind of upper-body strength most women never attain. She ran ultramarathons before they were hip and baked memorable brownies. She wielded the chainsaw fast, slashing through limbs above her head, putting in face cuts in seconds. People spoke of her respectfully; she was competent, but also a little rash. Who knew what she'd do?

I apprenticed myself to these women. I studied them, envied their tight-veined hands, tanned wrinkles shooting from their eyes, their easy cussing and the way they strode in their logging boots. At first, I felt pale and skinny in contrast, my hands soft from books, bootlaces always untied. I couldn't ski. I hated Miller Lite. Years later, now that I've been the longtimer younger women looked to, I wonder if Reba and Annie and Abby and Sherri felt like role models. Whether they guessed I wanted what they had, even if I didn't know exactly what it was.

Sixteen years after our first season together, Reba is still a friend. She's a nurse now, and lives south of Glacier with two lively girls and her husband, Rob, a timber framer. Their annual Christmas letters boast photos of Reba hiking in the park with her daughters, past rock walls we built. Annie writes me a postcard once in a while. She's been back to school again, had what our mothers call a “real job” in the Midwest, but kept her house in Montana. Abby and Sherri moved on to other parks, and we haven't been in touch. But when I sharpen a hand tool or drop my knee into a telemark turn, when I teach a newbie to place rocks in a wall that will outlast us both, I think of those women in their flannel shirts and tank tops and work pants, marching around in the sun, packs over their shoulders, modeling for me a possibility. I didn't know then about their worries and insecurities, didn't guess about the eating disorder, fights with a new husband, the joints wearing out, wanting to fall in love for real. Later, I'd see their faults—short-tempered, quick to blame—and also the fullness that comes from vulnerability. But first, I saw toughness, that assurance and vigor. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

Few people in this century know the language of mules. It's an almost-lost dialect, like the words of second-generation immigrants or children growing out of their make-believe tongues. Packers speak this language fluently—what you say to talk about loading and riding and caring for stock, and what you say to the animals themselves. To talk about
packing mules, you say:

String:
n—
A group of mules linked by ropes joining the bridle of one mule to a saddle ring on the one behind it. Use: “I'll have a string of five today.” A packer leads a string on horseback, though in steep terrain, may dismount and lead the string by hand.

Load:
n
—A pair of evenly weighted parcels that ride one to a side of a packsaddle. A load is made up of bear-proofed ammo boxes (for food and supplies), or toolboxes (open crates with a leather strap to lash down contents), or soft bags (for clothes, tents, sleeping bags) called “duffel.” A load is made up of two parcels, but is counted as one, corresponding with how many mules it will take to carry it. If asked, “How many loads you got?” you'd answer, “Three.” Six parcels for three loads for three head of stock. Don't get this wrong and answer, “Six loads,” or the packer will ready twice as many mules as he needs, and when he finds out your mistake, he'll tear you a new one.

Manta:
n/v
—Pronounced “manny,” a large square of off-white duck cloth (tan after one season) for wrapping equipment into loads that can be tied easily onto a packsaddle with manta ropes. The verb form is the act of preparing such loads. As in, “We gotta be at the barn to manny up before eight” or “Do you need a hand mannying?”

To talk to mules, you say,
Hey there girl, easy now, tchk-tchk, hush, hey, pshht, get on back, slow up, shhh.
You talk softly to calm, or loudly to command, but never so loud as to startle. (Only a salty packer can cuss at the top of his lungs without eliciting mayhem.) You make what noises seem right, ones that flow out of your mouth easy, a song or a curse, depending on the moment. When you know the animals, it's instinct.

Learn mule-speak as any language: immersion is best. Hang around the barn mouth shut, ears open. Say nothing for a long time, just listen to the packers talk, and when you are ready to try the words you think you've learned, you'll sound funny at first, to you and to them. It's better if you're humble.

Most of the Sperry district is above tree line, in alpine terrain. The patron saint of alpine crews is Archimedes, who stated, “Give me the place to stand and I shall move the Earth”; his lever is our most reached-for tool. I met the rock bar on a steep switchback halfway up the Sperry Trail, where my crew was to build a series of check steps. Reba pointed to the rocks she had in mind and explained the process. We'd bury them perpendicular to the trail, half stair tread, half barrier for fill, to prevent erosion. The rocks she chose were twenty-five yards off-trail, grown over with alpine plants. But big. Clearly big. Reba told me the number one rule of rockwork: if you can move it by yourself, it's not big enough. I couldn't move much by myself, but even so, the point was clear. Mass meant stability and stability meant resilience. Rockwork has to withstand traffic, erosion, and time.

We walked uphill to the rocks, Reba carrying the bar over her shoulder like Paul Bunyan's take on Huck Finn's hobo stick. I kicked at the base of her chosen boulder with the toe of my boot. It didn't budge. Reba dug around the edges with the pick mattock until she exposed a corner enough to ram the tip of the rock bar beneath. She pushed the bar downward and forced the rock up and out of its bed. Though the tool was self-explanatory, its mechanical principles obvious to any dummy, there were little tricks, smarter ways of use. Through trial and error, I learned to reef a rock upward with hardly any effort, jam rocks beneath it to hold it at an apex, and reposition. You could move a rock forward by sliding the bar under the front corner and rowing it along. You could jack a boulder up high so that it would flip over and move itself. You tried to choose a rock uphill of your work site: one flip could start a fast tumble and all you had to do was step out of the way. I grew fond of the rock bar. I was small and it was elegant. Together, we approximated strength, which I coveted more than a milkshake on day six of a hitch.

Of course, the rock bar amplified the potential of people much stronger than I, so their advantage remained. In Max's hands, the rock bar looked like a kitchen utensil. The same tool that I had to heft with two hands he'd curl in his fingers like a stray toothpick. I could not imagine what it would be like to be that powerful. At six-foot-three and a lean 210 pounds, Max never needed help. In his fifteenth season working trails, he knew how to do everything. He intimidated me from afar, his mythic quality buoyed by dogged stoicism. But before long, I realized Max was shy and a little awkward, kinder than he seemed when I first saw him tossing tools into the trucks. He took trailwork very seriously, could lose his temper in an unpredictable flash, but he was also humble, and the slightest teasing would make him blush. I tried to make Max smile with pointed ribbing, or by telling stories full of loony details, my hands like frenzied birds.

We worked for weeks one summer on the Highline Trail, Glacier's crown jewel carved out of bedrock, and Max ran the seventy-pound rock drill, harnessed by ropes perpendicular to the granite walls, his forearms as big around as my thighs. I hammered away at hard-to-reach cracks with the tip of the rock bar and shoveled shards of busted rock off the side of the trail. At lunch break, buoyed by the crew's high spirits and the panoramic view, I planted the rock bar on its end, bent my lips to its handle like a floor mic, and belted out “I Love Rocks and Rolls,” tweaking the lyrics for a trails verse, swinging my hips to make Joan Jett proud, and out of the corner of my eye I was pleased to see Max shaking his head, a loose smile on his face. We all have our strengths.

Glacier lilies bloom where snow just left, as allusive as if winter trailed a scent on its exit. Avalanche lilies, as they're called, flood couloirs and runout zones where late snow lingers. Bears churn up the ground in spring, focused on lily roots. Native people prize them in soup or raw. Unlike summer-lingering fireweed or dogged larkspur, these spiky yellow lilies blow through fast, following snowline as it creeps upward, melting. Sometimes they poke through patches of slush. In June down low, in August at high elevation, one week snow, one week blooms, next week gone. Here's to you, glacier lily, you cusp flower, winter's bright shadow.

What tourists say to a traildog:
Digging for gold? Wish I were young again! Who'd you kill? Do you pick up after the horses? Find what you're looking for yet? What a commute! Where's your ranger hat? Well isn't that nice, you're cleaning up the forest. Are you on the chain gang? What did you do to deserve this work? Thank you for your efforts. Nice office! Seen any bears? Doing time?

A woman on a trail crew is like a dog in a swimming pool. Even if it can swim, when it jumps in, it gets noticed. The simple fact of showing up for work female announces itself. First, there's the regular sizing up, the kind women are used to in any setting (
What's she look like? Is she my type?
), an unspoken commentary we might be privy to later, when we're one of the gang: “I've got a hottie on my crew!” or “Have you seen so-and-so in a tank top?” Then there's the extra level that happens in labor jobs (
Does she seem strong? Will she be a whiner? Can she take a dirty joke?
). Such taking stock is not a one-way street, of course; women do it, to men, to each other. But when “the new girl” enters a trails shop, she isn't rating all the guys; maybe later, but right then there are too many, and they're watching too close. There's a pressure to the air. An attentiveness, the animal instincts tuned in.

Sometimes, we're singled out in ways that seem superficially kinder than the meat-market perusal. Men will say they like having women on crews because it keeps them honest, makes for better conversation, and because women tend to “work smarter, not harder.” All of which are often true, and I know the men who say these things mean well. But like any classification that primarily locates someone in opposition to someone else, such kindly analyses can ring annoying to the one being characterized. Like blacks—great rhythm! And gay men—that eye for color! And redheads—boy are they feisty! Fawning stereotypes are as unwelcome as cruel ones, because they build you a box before you get to make your own.

Some women respond to stereotype by overswinging—trying to be the crassest, filthiest, most macho—a façade that's unappealing, let's face it, in
people,
male or female. I have little use for this labor version of the Madonna/whore dichotomy, where girls may be either the bawdiest of the bunch or the grounded earth mothers who keep the crew clean and modest, but nothing in between. Who among us takes a woods job in order to be the most foul, or worse, a civilizing influence?

We don't need men, though, to be aware of gender, and when it's just women, we jostle each other in sorority, all the while at watch. We brush up against each other's body images every day, all of us raised in an appraising world, taught to scrutinize others and ourselves. One woman constantly tends her physical appearance, lip-gloss always fresh; another won't skinny-dip at lunch break; one prefers the end of the hike line so no one can look at her butt. We know where we fit: who eats more, gains least, whose back is injured, who's had knee surgery, some breasts too large for comfortable hiking downhill, some too small to be evident in a baggy T-shirt, the tactful averting of eyes while we peel off sweaty bras at the end of a workday, the rubbing of sunscreen into shoulders and backs. We notice each other's bodies—the beautiful angles and the sweaty reek, the smooth curves and the puckered bulges—and we circle each other in the same dance we know from junior high, from office jobs, from locker rooms, these bodies different only because we are so fully
in
them.