Dreaded Aug. 19th came too fast, the day when my son, John, my friend, Ken Short and I were scheduled to do some selective, defensive light logging at the Stump Ranch, to remove some huge trees towering within easy wind, or beaver fall of the cabin.
My fears came from a fine Thanksgiving Day several years ago, when the late Lloyd Graff and I decided that two formerly “cute” aspens had to go that had grown so hugely up through a cut-out in the eaves that their swaying in high winds was now rocking the cabin. But first we had to fell two big ones in the way down the fall line. Just as the first one started falling, a sudden gust blew it onto the power line.
The ladies moved Thanksgiving dinner from the dead electric oven to the charcoal barbecue. Lloyd had completely lost his nerve, so a semi-pro tree feller and I finished the job a week later by hitching a cable as high up the trunks as we could, running it through a snatch block anchored down the fall line, then winching them over once the proper falling cuts were partially done.
That’s what Ken Short did this time, hitching the line far higher up each tree than we could in the old days, then rigging it through pulley blocks to his truck with which John would pull down the tree. Six aspen “skyscrapers” and two ancient, big-boled pines were soon and safely down. I mourned for each as they whumped into the forest duff from whence they grew.
The problem is how quickly this aspen-parkland-boreal forest reclaims the small space Mac Johnston and I cleared 40 years ago for a narrow trail in and a tight lot for a small cabin on the site I selected because moose liked to bed there for its warmth and sunlight in winter and its cool and fly-repelling breezes in summer. We wanted to fell as few trees as possible on such a remarkable 32 acres that a PHD in horticulture once told me he could spend a lifetime studying the life on a square meter of its forest under story.
While we were still working up our nerve with coffees, an Alberta Conservation Association crew turned up to ask how they could get down to our creekside hayfield to inspect and repair the Bucks for Wildlife fence protecting the streamside vegetation and the 10-foot public reserve along my side of the creek. That reminded me that Lloyd Graff was as pleased as I had been to pay for the survey, donate the 10-feet along the creek, and get in a Bucks fence when he bought his 36 acres downstream 30 years ago. I asked them about that fence, and they confirmed that some of it has been taken down.
Slightly more than a year ago, the Graff heirs sold the land and immediately, before the new owner could possibly have known what he had, bulldozers, Bobcats, ATVs, etc. were roaring around in there. Gone was the bog cranberry patch Marguerite Graff so loved, with its rare Calypso orchids. Dozed bare was Lloyd’s pasture that would faithfully bloom at this time of the year with aspen boletes, Alberta’s “official mushroom.”
From down by the half mile of Prairie Creek that runs along the east boundary of the 36 acres, I started being asked by whistle-blowing, outraged anglers, basically: “What is going on; isn’t there a public reserve all along the creek down there?” After studying 110 pictures taken by one of those anglers, I’m convinced a lot is going on, but I’m not sure what. I am sure, however, that there is a surveyed 10-foot public reserve all along the west bank of the creek down there, because I did the legal work when Lloyd bought and our old friend, John Horn, A.L.S. toiled hard on the difficult survey line that marks the east boundary of the property.
The land between that surveyed line and the creek belongs to all of us, to protect the creek and provide public access to it. The County of Clearwater and the province could find out whether the public reserve has been encroached upon and damaged by someone. The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans must look into whether whatever is going on down there has harmed fish habitat and the fishery. Last year, even the Government of Alberta and its contractor were heavily fined and ordered to repair damage they did to the Elbow River fish habitat and fishery in building a berm to protect Allen Bill Pond. Allen, my outdoors writing mentor, was turning over in his grave. Could the tremors I felt as I scrolled through those pictures from along Prairie Creek be coming from former owner Lloyd Graff turning over in his grave because his ghost sees . . . knows something we don’t . . . yet?
Bob Scammell is an award winning outdoors writer living in Red Deer.