At Spring Creek

the days were longest, fourteen hours, eighteen, wind
had shifted and the flames took wings of fir, drifting
like maple seed rockets over and into tall timber
in dusky hollows and deep draws. There the scattered
smokes rose from duff at ground level or in angles of big limbs,
spitting coals downhill, gently spreading. Brought
to a landing nearest some blue smoke, we gathered
hose, coupled on our nozzles, inch-and-a-half, and ran,
almost flying, fanning out and down, seeking. I came
to a tree the size of forever, and stood beneath its huge
canopy in gathering darkness, not finding. A silent
branch arrowed down, smoke-wreathed, burying
five inches of its base in soft soil not ten feet
away. Looking up -- and up, and up, I found fire
a hundred feet at least from the ground, beyond
hosing out. The boss came down to my radio call, and "Jesus"
was all he said for awhile; then he radioed out
for the cutter: "bring the whole crew, she's a big spuce."
Old growth Sitka.
Four men came, with axes, wedges, gas cans, oil, files,
a lot of stuff, and one old Stihl with forty-eight inches
of bar and chain. The spruce had a bell, bulked wide
at the earth like a swamp cypress, too big for the saw;
the first cuts dressed out decks: platforms for the cutter
and his swampers to stand on, like springboards
of the old timber beasts. The cutter was old even
for his age, toothless and wizened, four foot eight.
He eased up onto the deck and dogged the saw into bark
at breast height, to make his downhill wedge cuts.
The saw would have to go round the corner out of sight.
A big swamper climbed on behind his boss, grabbed
the tree, anchoring the tiny man with his free hand:
they stood immobile in the noise and cascade of chips,
never bating, for above two hours. Four cuts for the deck,
four for the wedge cut, two for the back cut. Then
they placed their orange wedges, driving with the polls
of their single-bitted axes. The almost two hundred feet
of spruce shuddered, twisted a bit, and leaned out
toward the far-away night roar of the creek. Shouts
drifted up, and the tree top swung away like a boom,
making good time, fanning itself into flame, an arrow
of man's desire. There were three mature hemlocks
in its path, almost old growth; it cleared them out,
throwing slash and roman-candling cinders over half
an acre, rolling with them into the creek bed, and into
utter and impossible silence.

The cutters measured the fresh, already bleeding
stump. "Nine-and-a-half feet from bark to bark!"
they crowed. I looked at the suddenly starlit sky,
and the huge wrack far below, and said to no one:
brightness falls from the air. Then sadly hoisted
hose, and stumbled down to finish off my fire,
walking the bole where none but birds had been.