Hiking in a second-growth forest in British Columbia today, I ran across an abandoned piece of equipment called a Mechanical Donkey. This device, about the size of a compact car, was used to winch fallen trees up or down the very steep slopes upon which they had grown. Now rusted, with a frayed cable wrapped around the spool, this device was critical to the livelihoods of the first European settlers in my remote location.
A few hundred yards below me, there remains a small settlement of First...