Bowhiking and firewood that you won't

Here's the Chieftain 'And Furthermore' I sent in for next week. Kind of an expansion of the bowhiking post put on here earlier.

I’d like to thank the deer and elk of the Minam and Imnaha units for another fantastic bowhiking season. Once again, I got my exercise for the year out of the way during archery season and will be filling my freezer with veggie burgers after never getting off a shot.

I consider bowhunting my version of a gym membership, where I pay ODFW to get in some cardio, or whatever it’s called when you move around and sweat. I don’t ever fill my tag, but I do get kind of in shape from all that walking around while carrying my bow. Bowhiking, I like to call it. Exerting energy doesn’t generally strike me as a good idea and I need motivation if I’m going to walk any distance or climb something steep. Like being chased. Or chasing something else. Like an elk herd.

Mike Baird does not share my cautious approach toward exercise. Baird let me tag along on a few of his elk forays this season, though they struck me as more of an Iron Man competition than the ‘little strolls’ he would describe them as. By late afternoon, I would be looking for materials to build a hut with, resigned to never getting out of the wilderness, when Baird would hear a distant bugle from three drainages away and merrily set off, saying if we just climbed this ridge, got to that summit, traversed that rock slide and scratched our way through miles of underbrush, we’d be there in no time.

And by golly we’d do it and Baird would bugle an elk in, but we never got a shot. Mike suggested I quit using my cow call and try to get my money back because it didn’t sound natural. Almost like something was suffering. I hadn’t been using a cow call, just wheezing, trying to breathe after an endurance march he would call, ‘just hiking right over there.’

Aside from the forced exercise, another bonus of bowhiking is finding firewood. Now and then you stumble on a patch of wood you may not have seen without wandering around. I found some prime tamarack this year. Cords and cords of it, just on the edge of old logging roads that all turned out to have tank traps blocking access.

If the Forest Service goes through with closing more roads, I hope they’ll offer some public education meetings about switching to propane or oil heat because I don’t know a thing about it. How do you stick your tag on a cord of propane? Do I need to use bar oil if I’m cutting a load of heating oil? I’m confused, Forest Service. Can we have access to all the paperwork generated by the road closure plan? There might be enough BTU’s there to power Wallowa County woodstoves for a winter.

I went to one of Ron Thies’ woodcutting meetings where I heard a good point: if the Forest Service is interested in fuels reduction, firewood cutters are doing their job for them. And paying for the privilege. I’ve also been to a Forest Service meeting where they explained needing to reduce fuels in the woods, and were going about it by spending lots of money.

If these road closures happen I’ve got another request: that the thermostats in the offices where this plan was cooked up be blocked by filing cabinets or cubicle dividers—some obstruction that makes it a challenge to get heat. Policy makers will be able to see the heat source but not get to it, a lot like that tamarack in the woods I can’t get to. If there’s a fire in that part of the office and fire crews can’t get there because a path that used to exist has been blocked off, well, at least the carpet has had a chance to regenerate because you haven’t been trampling on it.

I suppose I’d get more exercise if the road closures happen, walking around with my chainsaw and not finding anything to use it on. Just like bowhiking during archery season.