Boreal B[l]og

It’s just an old plywood boat

With a ’75 Johnson

With electric choke

— Alan Jackson (singer-songwriter, from his song “Drive”)

I heard the sound of a starter cord’s being pulled but nothing started. 

I was leading a work party to the E2C Trail (Eugene to the Pacific Crest) from the North Shore Road by Lookout Point Reservoir up to Winberry Divide. I was familiar with the trail, 3 years ago having worked it and two days prior hiking it to be familiar with the upcoming job: clear encroaching brush and establish and clear water drainages. It rained two days earlier, and parts of the trail then looked like a Willamette tributary.

The crew split into dealing with one or the other tasks. I was one with the power brusher, which I like. I’m all thumbs with tools, but helping a person use a brusher was the first time I taught anything to another crew member. It’s rewarding to show a person how to use their own body to pull a starter cord hard enough to start the motor.

Well, sometimes.

I went over to the recalcitrant brusher, moved the fuel knob from choke to high, and pulled a couple of times. From the vibration, I knew it started, because with Kleenex in my ears plus the ear muffs on my hardhat, I couldn’t hear a thing. The brusher was back in business. I didn’t do anything special; maybe I got lucky, for the second time that day. Made me feel good. The brushers were listening to my whispers. While working, I wear a vest fastening me to the shaft. I move the rotating blade back and forth across the trail, couple feet on either side. Everybody with whom I’ve brushed thinks we clear about twice as much distance as we actually do.

I was a generation before Alan Jackson, when the motor on my plywood boat was not 75 hp but a 5 hp green Johnson SeaHorse, 2 cycle, no electric choke but a silver dial on the left side on the top. I had no idea it was a choke and in 1954 in Ontario too young to understand anyway. I turned the brass four cross screw left side and would hear fuel flow. I next opened the silver gas vent cap on top, hearing the hiss of escaping vapor. I then pushed the clutch out, which looked like a silver ear and put the shaft in neutral, moved the throttle to the stop, half way to the right, pumped the silver disk three or four times, and pulled the starter cord on the upper right part of the motor’s front, rewarded by smoke and the sound of the Johnson. Reverse was rotating the motor. Put me by that motor right now, fueled, and I could start it blindfolded and immediately recognize sounds I haven’t heard in seventy years. I share Jackson’s feelings he had driving his boat, “a piece of my childhood will never be forgotten.”

So perhaps it isn’t surprising I like brushing. The orange Stihl is a 4-cycle motor using a 2-stroke 50:1 fuel mix, 24.1 cc /35 mm bore, 25 mm stroke, and yes, it is loud and pollutes, but it allows us to clear brush from long sections of non-wilderness trail. On the lower part of Olallie Mountain, in the Three Sisters Wilderness, there is a long stretch of thimbleberry. In 2018, Brad and I spent a few hours brushing it by hand, a big chore. Sig spent a day on it a year ago. On Lowder Mountain, three of us spent a morning hand clearing only a third of the brush in the lower reach. I hiked Cummins Creek Wilderness trail once with waist high brush that completely soaked my pants, prompting a non-intended change to rain gear. Thick brush is a safety hazard; coming down Horsepasture Mountain last summer, there were 2-3 foot drop-offs on the trail we couldn’t see because the brush was so thick. Trails will disappear without brushing. 

We cleared a mile that day and established nearly ninety separate drainage spots on the trail. We’re half done.

This entry was posted on December 24, 2024 at 18:37 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.