Logging Road Lore

Sedro Woolley is a town founded and foddered by the logging industry, but the foothills of the North Cascades didn’t always belong to Weyerhaeuser. The indigenous Salish people of the area fished and farmed in the Skagit Valley long before the first mill was ever erected. The tribes were eventually pushed onto reservations as the United States continued to push their borders to the west. Although this occurred many generations ago, folklore derived from the spiritual beliefs of the Salish remained, seemly imprinted on the land itself. The stories imparted attributes to the spirits, represented by local animals. Ravens were tricksters, wolves were warriors, racoons were clever rascals, and many more. I grew up listening to and learning about these legends. As I finished my last few years of adolescence in 2010, I lived through the lore.

My old S-10 pickup roared and rumbled up the steep switchbacks of Forest Service Road 107. The white hood was so splattered with mud from the logging road that the color of the truck was all but ambiguous. The three men in the cab with me, Matt, Alex, & Carlos, had already polished off one case of Rainer Beer and we were working on our second as we started to gradually emerge above the tree line. The thinning in the trees was not due to our elevation, as soon as we crossed the last property line near the top of the low mountain, the uphill landscape was nearly bare, spotted with the remnants of the 2-year-old logging stand. The road continued diagonally uphill long the property boundary, to the left was a forest filled with firs, cedars, and ferns. To our right the limbs and debris were so thick it was difficult to walk through. It was here that we saw the first owls. We crossed a small stream and as the front end of the truck came out of the creek bed, a small hemlock to our left came into view. Sitting on opposing sides of the tree were two white owls, each nearly a foot tall, and both watching us with unwavering eyes. My passengers tried their best to get a rise out of the owls, but even with the birds less than twenty feet from us, no amount of yelling and racket could shake their stares from us. We continued up the hill to the overlook, owls still watching us as they faded from view. Just before twilight we reached the crest of the incline, stopped, and began to setup our make-shift camp and light a fire.

A star-filled darkness settled on us as we got comfy in our camp chairs, washing down our dinner of sweet-potato hash with yet another case of Rainer. We drank and laughed for another couple hours until the light of the fire began to fade a little. Then we heard the owl. A soft cooing noise coming from the edge of our little camp. It went nearly unnoticed until Matt began silently pointing our attention to the limit of the light across the fire from him. In what my father always called the penumbra, the shadowy border of the fire light, a faint white owl face sat at shoulder height, watching us. Hypnotizing us. The animal’s eyes did not move, it demanded reverence. As courageous as we all considered ourselves, no one spoke while the owl was there. I don’t know how long the silence lasted. When I finally broke free from that black-eyed gaze the fire was nothing but glowing coals. I glanced around the fire at my friends before returning my focus to the owl, only to find that it was gone. The moment I registered its departure a feeling reared up inside of me like nothing I had ever felt. the urge to find the owl, to see its eyes again, pulled at my mind like thirst in a desert. I rose without a word and glanced Matt rising in unison. We walked wordlessly to where the owl had been and kept walking into the darkness.

My memories of the rest of that night are so faint that they seem to change as I recall them. Matt and I walked out of the camp, down the road, and began trudging through the debris in the logged area. The only thing I thought about the whole time was finding the owl. I can’t remember exactly what how, but while stepping from stump to log, I fell into a space hidden by branches. Although I wasn’t trapped, the delirium from the alcohol mixed with my entranced state of mind made it too difficult to move , in just a few minutes, sleep washed over me. I don’t remember hearing anything from our camp, but there must have been a cacophony.

I woke up mid-morning after hearing a vehicle pass nearby. Stiff and sore from passing out nearly upright among sharp branches and rocks, after regaining my bearings, I walked back up the hill to our camp. The scene I found made me upturn the previous night’s hash before I even got all the way up the hill. The ground was littered with shotgun shells and tire tracks. The rocks from the fire pit we built the night before were scattered about. A beat-up Skagit County Sheriff truck was pulled up behind my S-10, Carlos and Alex were sitting on the tailgate, faces pale and eyes scared. On the other side of the small dirt-covered campsite was Matt. Even covered in that black coroner’s sheet I knew it had to be him. Before I could feel the sadness that would come to weigh me down, I started scream questions aloud to anyone listening. I grabbed the person closest to me and begged them to tell me what was going on. The officer l grabbed managed to calm me down after some time and then told me the gist. After Matt and I disappeared, Alex and Carlos started to get worried and got the shotgun out from under the back seat. They said they called for us although I don’t remember hearing anything. Eventually, fear overtook them, paranoia began dominating reason and they started shooting wildly into the darkness. Once all the ammo was gone, they got into the back of the truck and stayed awake the rest of the night through. It was then they saw Matt. Down away from camp, at the property line where the trees started again. Matt perched ten feet up staring at the camp, an owl on the brim of his hat. He probably only took one or two shots, but at this distance with a shotgun, it was more than enough. Neither man could even look at the body, they walked back to the truck, called the sheriff, and refused to look at Matt again. The owl flew off when the sheriff started to pull down the body.

The incident was chalked up to a hunting accident and we were all released. I drifted away from Alex and Carlos over the next year, none of us ever able to explain our actions to the others. I still think about that night and the owls all the time. In Salish stories, the owl is a watchman and often associated with death. We watched death and we died. I don’t read into superstitions, but if I ever see those placid owl faces again, I know beyond doubt that next time, I won’t be watching, next time, I will be death.