Page 4 of Liberated By the Logger

Unfortunately, the weather is outside our control.

As soon as the first bolt of lightning streaks across the sky, I make the call to quit for the day. I notify my brother back at headquarters.

Alan answers on the first ring. “Let me guess. The weather is taking a shit on us?”

“Yup.”

“Damn. We knew it was a possibility. Still sucks to quit this early in the day, especially at the start of the season.”

“Better to not risk it.”

“Agreed. Have fun pissing off the crew.” And then he disconnects.

Using the safety alert app on my satellite phone, I send out a message to all of my crew.

We got lightning. You know the drill. Wrap it up and come back in safely.

The guys are going to be a mixed bag of emotions when they return down the hill to base camp. Some will be happy to call the day early while others will be spitting nails, mad about losing out on the overtime. Loggers don’t make much. If you have a family to support, every paying hour counts.

My men can be angry all they want. Dead loggers can’t support their families and I refuse to have blood on my hands.

My phone dings with an alert text coming through our safety app.

Brose, you need to come up here. We have a situation.

Nervous about my crew, my fingers quickly type out a reply.

Is someone hurt?

Not yet. But this fool’s gone and chained himself to a marked tree.

Fucking stupid-ass tree huggers. They’re always causing my crew issues and putting themselves in unnecessary danger. Considering this one has chained himself to a tree hazard, he’s a grade dumber than the usual lot. It could be the yurt-squatter the park rangers had warned us about. Some nature loving hippy would fit the bill for the type to tie himself to a dead or dying tree.

As the first of the heavy raindrops fall from the sky, I type out a fast reply.

On my way.

Grabbing the bolt cutters from our supply trailer, I climb into my truck and drive up the makeshift road we’ve cut and cleared during our operations here in the Rocky Mountain National Park. The road is already muddy. It will be a pain in the ass to navigate back down. I’ll need to make quick work of cutting this idiot loose before the road becomes a hazard for my men to travel on.

When I arrive at the site where my crew is working, I find my men circled around the marked pine. In the center is a man no older than his mid-twenties, chained to the goddamn tree. I’ve got a good decade on him in age and about a hundred years more in the common sense department.

Shaking my hardhat-covered head in annoyance, I approach the group with my bolt cutters.

As I get closer, one of my timber fallers—Wade—greets me.

“We tried reasoning with him, Brose,” Wade apologizes, hollering over the pouring rain. He uses his pointer finger to make small circles at his head. “The guy either has a few screws loose or he’s high on something.”

Great. A sober tree hugger is hard enough to deal with. I can only imagine how unreasonable a stoned tree hugger is to manage.

Muttering a curse, I approach the restrained man. “You must have a death wish, shackling yourself to a diseased tree. That pine is infested with the Mountain Pine Beatles. It’s rotting from the inside out and very unstable.”

The tree hugger either doesn’t hear me or is deliberately ignoring me. He sucks in a big lungful of air before he shouts, “I am the Gary! I speak for the trees!”

Yup. Definitely high.

Wade snickers beside me. “What in The Lorax is this shit?”

My men can’t help but laugh at the absurd display.