2 L THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 

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and mountainous, often unsurveyed 1 and well-nigli 



inaccessible. I knew by hearsay that the work 

 was the most trying, physically, of any in the Forest 

 Service; that only the hardiest might hope to suc- 

 cessfully undergo the ordeal set the cruiser. It 

 meant, I was aware, living for months on end in 

 camps, a tent for home and the ground a constant 

 couch. ^. It meant toiling daily over brush-covered 

 hills, across malpais-strewn mesas, through tangled 

 thickets of woven thorns and fallen aspen, over jut- 

 ting peaks or down into treacherous canyons with 

 sides of sheer granite or sliding shale. Day in and 

 day out, I knew, one made his "run" under a blind- 

 ing summer sun, or in rain or hail or snow, follow- 

 ing the finger of the compass wherever it might lead. 

 Yet I had learned also of the intense fascina- 

 tion the experience held for those who made good 

 and stuck. The very difficulties, the obstacles that 

 arose each day in varied guise, once they came to 

 be looked upon as part of the game, seemed but to 

 whet the appetite of the cruiser for successful per- 

 formance. The wholesome life in the open, too, 

 eventually hammered the members of a party into a 

 buoyant fitness that was good to contemplate. And 

 then the financial phase was attractive. I had been 

 making both ends just about meet on the ranger dis- 

 trict where I was stationed. There would be no 

 chance for a higher salary until fall brought the 

 Civil Service examination for Assistant Forest 

 Ranger. By contrast, the certainty of six months' 



