he died in the woods

My friend Jim died last Tuesday, while working alone on a logging job. He'd been a logger forever, and was very happy to be back in the woods this year, after a frustrating moratorium on forestry operations on State lands kept him from working locally. But this particular job required a significant commute to the site. Long days of driving in the dark, then working hard from daylight to dusk, then driving home in the dark, were taking a toll. When I saw Jim two weeks ago, he talked about how tired he was - something I'd never once heard him say in all the years I've known him. Complain about bureaucracy? Anytime. Complain about lazy people? Oh my, yes. But complain about being tired? From working? Never. It was worrying, but at least I knew this job was almost finished; he intended to be "out of there before Christmas."

I met Jim years ago when he was helping friends in town with their tractor. We identified many common connections in Massachusetts forestry, and he became my local go-to for tree work. He tackled some jobs, and told me straight up if there was something he would not take on. A few years ago when we had so much rain and wind that trees were blowing down all over the region, one of my tall, healthy oaks fell, leaving the root plate vertical and the entire bole suspended horizontally a few feet above the ground. Jim shook his head and said, "that's a young man's job." But when a maple came down across one of my paddock fences, he cut it up for me the same day, so I could repair the fence immediately and keep the goats safe. Jim liked to come across as gruff and grumpy, and he never walked through my paddocks without saying, "Those goats hate me," even as Tsuga would be trying to get close enough to tug on his jacket.

Despite his cultivated persona of old curmudgeon, Jim was a person  with a kind heart, who couldn't do enough for people. In fact, he had a hard time letting me ask for help when it was needed, instead of just doing things he thought would be helpful. An example that makes me smile: my woodstove. It drove Jim a little bit crazy that my small woodstove burns wood under 13 inches long. Any stove that couldn't take at least a 16" stick just didn't make sense to Jim. And while I agreed every time the subject came up - which was often - that it would indeed be convenient not to have to feed a stove in the middle of the night, I always pointed out that my little Waterford is a fine size for heating my tiny house. We had probably had this conversation 20 times before Jim appeared one day with a woodstove in the back of his truck. He had just helped someone else remove it from their house, and thought he'd bring it by. "Just for you to take a look at," he said casually. "Just in case you want it."

I shouldn't have been surprised; Jim always had opinions about what was wrong with a situation - on a scale ranging from personal to global - and what should be done to fix it. From some people, this might be grating, but from Jim it wasn't, because it was so clearly based on good intentions. Last October, the day I told him I'd decided to try to get by without a vehicle was the same day he started telling me I needed to replace my truck. About a month ago, feeling overwhelmed by the list of medical appointments I suddenly needed to beg rides for, I said, "Okay, Jim, I'm looking for a vehicle. Would you please keep your eyes open for a small truck?" and without even saying "I told you so!" Jim said he had been keeping his eyes open all along. I suppose if he had found an old Tacoma for sale last Winter he would have shown up in it one day, "Just for you to take a look at. Just in case you want it."

Jim kept an eye out for lots of things and lots of people. Although he chose to work alone and in the woods, he was a very sociable person with a wide network of friends and acquaintances. He had a regular Saturday chinwag with not one, but two, separate groups of friends, putting the world to rights on a weekly basis. He probably interacted with more people in a week than I do in a year. If he hadn't heard from me in a while, he'd call just to see how things were going and remind me to ask if I needed a hand with anything. "You're one of my clients," he would say. "You're Good People. You're on my List." I can't imagine how long Jim's "List" was, but I expect to hear a lot of tales from other "clients" as time goes on.

Jim was Good People, and I'm missing him already.

~~~~~