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Anna M. Lind (ND-ND) http://tinyurl.com/AMLind

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Nature's Gentlemen

From Women in Early Logging Camps, 1975.

Reader: Jessica Teeter

For those who see it, the carving of Paul Bunyan in northern California's redwood country evokes a bygone stereotype, the strong-limbed, mighty lumberjack who is a force of nature nearly as powerful as the trees he harvests.

After the First World War, Anna M. Lind waited tables in Humboldt County logging camps. Her description of the lumberjacks she knew contradicts our Paul Bunyan stereotype.

Our logger husbands needed us. On cold rainy days when the men came home at night drenched to the skin, wives helped to peel off the wet, clinging clothes that stuck to their cold bodies like glue, every stitch wringing wet. There would be a warm fire in the kitchen range, a pot of steaming coffee, or if anywhere near payday, a hot drink or two. I'll put it in simple words. I, who had been warm and dry all day, could not do enough for my young husband. . . .

It seems that women in the logging camps, whether working in the cookhouse or living in family houses, exerted a good influence over the men. I've worked in a number of logging camps and can truthfully say I was always treated courteously and like a lady. I've read or heard somewhere that Stewart Holbrook said "Loggers are nature's gentlemen." And it's true.

Anna M. Lind's recollections of lumbercamp life were published as "Women in Early Logging Camps" in 1975.