The Mystery of Cruiser’s Epitaph

“Cruiser” was a logger’s dog, and a tough-looking Bulldog at that. In the forests along Hood Canal where he died 75 years ago, he could have been little else, for a timber cruiser is the woodsman who ranges out ahead of a logging crew to select and mark the trees to be harvested.

 His grave marker was carved from a fine plank of red cedar.  A superb piece of design and craftsmanship, it must have literally taken “a month of Sundays” for a logger of that era to carve, and in itself is a remarkable epitaph to a faithful friend.  Originally coated with whitewash and pine tar to imitate marble, Father found it planted in our woodlands some decades ago, deep in a forest hollow.  Ever since we’ve puzzled with why someone would bury their dog so far from civilization, and with scenic vistas of mountains and beaver ponds so close, why in such an unremarkable spot.  It wasn’t until a recent thinning knocked down the thick undergrowth there that I was confident I had the answers.

 I don’t know who Cruiser’s master was, but he likely worked for the McCormick Logging Company who logged this forest for the first time during that period, based out of nearby Camp Union.  He was probably a Scandinavian who moved West with McCormick and other men of his trade from Wisconsin.  I suspect he was a tree faller…and a faller from the backbreaking days of long-handled falling axes, springboards to raise the fallers above thick root buttresses, ”misery whip” crosscut saws, and the steam-powered winches on skids called “donkeys” that moved the logs.  You can still see the ruts in the ground and cable damage on the trees where the McCormick donkey was positioned next to the overgrown roadbed of their Shay-locomotive logging railway, just a short walk from Cruiser’s grave.

 I hope that our faller and I would have been friends, and that my friend doesn’t mind that I cleaned off the old whitewash and tar to apply the best varnish I could obtain. I hope that when this gentleman looks down from heaven, he approves of the simple stand I made to keep his craftsmanship out of the weather. After all, I did make sure it got back to where he placed it in 1936……

 ......where our faller buried his beloved Cruiser next to the tree that killed him.