I believe I told you about the lumbering operation going on just above us on the abutting property belonging to Andy Leinoff. We hear the equipment nearly every day and there have been lots of loads of lumber and chips going past our house. Fred had been up into the wood a little way a couple weeks ago and knew they were operating there, but I hadn't seen it and wanted to know how things look.

Today was such a nice day, sunshine and in the high 20's, or maybe even in the 30's in the sun, after lunch I suggested we take our snowshoes and hike up in there. It isn't far to get to the property line, and it was amazing how different everything looked. That had been heavily forested with big firs and spruces, plus a lot of hard woods like birch, maples and beech, and very difficult to get through on foot, no matter what time of year. There are a couple of small brooks and lots of springs and swampy sags. There is now mostly hard wood trees left, nicely thinned out so you can actually see the pond from some places, at least until the leaves are out again.

Right away we saw a big green skidder going through the woods above us, and we could hear more beyond. We followed one of the logging roads to the landing where another machine was sawing the logs to length and stacking them. The skidder brings the trees to the landing, four or five at a time, and they are cut to size with that really big saw.

There was quite a lot of debris and the air was tinged with the pungent smell of spruce and fir. I love the smell of newly cut soft wood. There were a lot of animal tracks in the woods, too. I'm sure the deer appreciate having a nice road to travel and may take advantage of some of the buds on the tree tops scattered around that they normally couldn't reach.

You'll see in the slide show the path we took to the top of the hill, the landing where they stack the wood and cut it to proper lengths. Once we were out of the woods where the landing was, we started up the hill towards the Lienoff buildings. We we headed directly for the Leinoff's barn where the oatmeal factory used to be. We were totally surprised to see a bunch of sheep watching us. I gave them a "baaaaa" and a few more appeared for the second picture. As we reached the pinnacle where we could see the twin silos of what used to be the Bolton farm and is now the Sousa farm, the wind out of Canada hit us full force. It's always cold up there. We didn't want to hang out there long, so we scooted down past the Leinoff's house knowing that would be the shortest route home. What we didn't know was that there was more equipment working there.

It was very rough getting through the area on snowshoes. There were ridges of snow left from the cutting operation, fallen trees (from the wind, not cut) brush, berry bushes and it was really, really steep so we had to be very careful. It required sort of a combination of snowshoeing and skiing, plus navigating over and under trees. We came out just above Jamie and Marie's house, which isn't very far at all as the crow flies or by the route we took, but it was rough going and I was very glad to get home.

Here is a slide show of our trip. When you Joe's Ponders get back this spring, look up on that hillside and I bet you'll notice quite a difference in the landscape.
Slide Show

You probably wonder why we were walking on the logging road with our snowshoes on, and we did think about taking them off, but actually it was better getting over all the sticks and stumps with them on than it would be going on foot and carrying them. We had to be very careful not to puncture a snowshoe or trip on sticks, etc., but we also wanted to be sure if we had to get off the roadway quickly because one of the skidders was coming, we could do that without sinking up to our fannies in snow. The snow is very deep in the woods. As it was, we didn't tangle with any of the equipment, we didn't ruin our snowshoes or break any bones, and while I'm beginning to stiffen up a tad, it was a good day in the woods and we enjoyed it. We were out about an hour and a half, almost non-stop, so I figure we both got a pretty good workout today.