On a break from schoolwork today, I cycled down to the Moss Street Market with the 6-yr-old on board, stopping at a few garage sales. A lovely morning, really, rounded off with a quick stop at the reliably well-stocked Grafton Books on Oak Bay Avenue:
- Ralph W. Andrews, Heroes of the Western Woods ($9, a pocket-sized classic from 1960), and
- Terry Glavin, A Ghost in the Water ($10, the first title in the Transmontanus series Glavin edits for New Star Books - nice review at Dooney's Cafe).
The Andrews book has some amazing photos from early days logging the redwoods in California. They'd weld together two twelve-foot saws, so there's a shot of an improvised 24-foot saw barely long enough to span the downed log. There's another of twenty men holding hands, still not not able to surround the base of a standing tree. Another of a married couple dwarfed against the cut end of a log - with another man on a ladder above them, his feet half a body above their heads, his head not all the way to the top side of the log. Another of a huge axe cut into a redwood, maybe three feet in height, that represented three days of work and yet still wasn't big enough to let the sawing begin. Unimaginable trees - unimaginable. I'll scan and post some images when I get around to reading this one, which I expect will be fun!
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Theresa K.