2 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 
and mountainous, often unsurveyed and well-nigh 
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’ 
