Charlie Fisher by Wendell Berry

I DON'T IMAGINE Charlie Fisher told me everything he has done, but in the day and a half I spent with him I did find out that he was raised on a truck farm, that for a while he rode bulls and exhibited a trick horse on the rodeo circuit, that as a young man he worked for a dairyman, and that later he had a dairy farm of his own. His interest in logging and in working horses began while he was a hired hand in the dairy. In the winter, between milkings, he and his elderly employer spent their time in the woods at opposite ends of a crosscut saw-which, Charlie says, made him tireder than it made the old dairyman. They cut some big timber and dragged out the logs with horses. The old dairyman saw that Charlie liked working horses and was good at it. And so it was that he became both a teamster and a logger.

Though he tried other employment, those two early interests stayed with him, and he has spent many years in logging with horses. There were times when he worked alone, cutting and skidding out the logs by himself. Later, his son, David, began to work with him, skidding out the logs while Charlie cut. David, who is now twenty-two, virtually grew up in the woods. He started skidding logs with a team when he was nine, and he is still working with his father, as both teamster and log cutter.