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 Nations people, the Sechelt Band. They recently built a longhouse in the area, which is what I came to see. I wondered what their ancestors thought of the noisy gas-powered machine that moved hand-hewn trees from here to there. Did it seem silly? Pointless? 

The original trees were enormous. I found one section of an old-growth tree on my hike. Maybe 15 feet tall, about twenty five feet in diameter. To move it would have taken a team of animals. This Mechanical Donkey must have seemed a godsend, and been very expensive. To see it abandoned in a silent forest made me think about all the people whose livelihoods depended on it. I picture the loggers as tough redheads, kind of like skinny Edmonton Oilers in plaid wool shirts. What would they think to see this engineering marvel rusting here?