Starvation Ridge

The old crew bus would pick the one day,
a twelve hour run far over Dworshak,
with rain sieving in from across the Snake,
to give up its sad ghost. We knew
from its weird clunk that simply pumping gas
into a quart jar would not avail us here.
Dead larches bumped and jousted in the wind.
below, in gathering dark, was camp, not far
as measured by truck miles, but far enough
for men and women wrung out with woods work,
hands and faces grimed with mica and vermiculite,
no supper in sight, and thunder thumping at them
from the east. Oh, well. We all relaced
our heavy high heeled boots, chose what things
to carry, and humped out into night. I walked
beside our oldest hand, a local man somewhat,
who lived around here till the snows began,
then like the geese descended on our river valley,
staying drunk till spring, "to seal my guts,"
as he would say, "against your never-ending damp."
Our calks betrayed us to the night by throwing sparks
now and again from gravel under foot.
"Why is it called," I asked, "Starvation Ridge?"
"A bunch of sheepmen got snowed in one September.
By the time the town came looking, they had eat
a hell of a lot of sheep." He spat downwind.
"The loggers hate this place. Say the hill is jinxed.
Maybe. Marvin Petrie lost his brakes up here
with fifty-five hundred board foot of timber
right behind his ass. He couldn't throw her
to the hill side, going too fast already, so he went
straight to the Gunsight Rocks down here, and jammed
the trailer in between. The cab went on through,
stopped short in midair, then folded down. He sat
in his seat and watched as all his logs
passed three feet overhead, and arrowed off
into the canyon. Here, I'll show you." We walked
down to the bleak and massy rocks. Between them,
on the outside of the curve, hung empty space.
We heard, but could not see, in raddled cloud,
the rumbling North Fork far below.
"How," I asked, "did he get out?" "Opened the door
and climbed right up the cab. Bill Hanson come along
right then, and found him standing there a-yelling,
drumming on the roof with a single-bitted axe."