Picking Pine Cones high in the trees

Truth is much stranger than fiction. While I was watching programs on Alaska on TV yesterday
Alaska
 it made me think of my life in Mt. Shasta in the late 1970s and early 1980s. My friends and I were a part of the "Back to the Land" movement out of UC Berkeley and UCLA and all of the western colleges and ways of thinking from the 1960s onwards.

So, by about 1980 we all saw ourselves as Mountain men with our women living in the mountains and often raising out children there. I was raising 3 kids then 1 from my first marriage and 2 from my new wife's previous marriage then in 1980 and 1981. We had recently purchased 2 1/2 acres but hadn't fully built our house yet and needed to make some money to buy more building materials. So, a friend of mine who owned property near mine had an idea to get a contract with the California Department of Forestry to get a contract gathering all sorts of pine cones, Cedar cones and Fir Cones throughout the area because it was an extreme bumper crop year for cones because the conditions had been ideal that year for producing cones.

At that time most pine cone pickers worked by the hour for the Forest Service or the California Department of Forestry for about $5 to $10 dollars an hour depending upon the remoteness of the area. Being 32 I didn't see doing that as practical at the time. Because it is too dangerous for what you are going to be paid being that high off the ground (20 feet to 200 feet off the ground). But my friend's idea made sense because then we would be contractors and the money we could make by the hour was not limited because we would be gathering by the bushel and being paid by the bushel we could make as much per hour as we wanted to and were resourceful enough to.

So, at that time in my life I made more per hour picking pine cones (per hour worked) which likely was somewhere between 50 to 100 dollars an hour picking pine cones of many varieties (which we labeled by the bushel in bags provided by the CDF here in California.

However, as mountain men at first I think we were lucky none of us died or were seriously injured.
As one by one we fell out of trees 20 to 30 feet when limbs broke and got black and blue and bleeding we realized we had to think more like rock climbers and so brought our rock climbing skills into action by bringing safety ropes and clips and carabiners which are strong but clip easily into the tree trunks so we could gather easily and then only would fall no more than 10 feet at a time so we wouldn't die.

Douglas fir cones were by far the most dangerous because the cones are always way out on the end of limbs sometimes 10 or more feet long. So, the only way to gather these cones was to grab a limb above us while jumping up and down on the limb below us to dislodge the cones and often that limb might break. One of these breaking experiences I almost died and found myself hanging in space holding onto the upper limb suddenly. Since I almost died I realized I need to bring ropes at that point and most of the rest of us did the same because we were of no use to our families and girlfriends dead.

Another difficult cone to get was Port Orford  Cedar cones. These were the most brittle limbs being cedar.

The tallest of trees were usually Douglas Fir trees from which are made 2 by 4's to build most houses in the U.S. So, I can remember being about 200 feet up in one of the oldest and biggest Douglas Fir trees. It was sort of like being in "The Hobbit" or something. Another friend who saw himself as a spiritual teacher came and we sat up in 200 feet high trees talking about how the universe works on a physical and spiritual level sometimes. It was sort of like being on another planet being that remote and beautiful and away from all human beings watching mt. shasta in the far distance. I think we were out near Bartle then which is very remote out on Hiway 89.

By the way the Lumber companies pay the Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry to gather the cones and replant after they clear cut areas. So, those same areas that are clear cut are replanted with similar trees.

When I was younger in the mid 1970s I was a tree planter at times with a hoe Dad (a long looking axe type of tool where you throw it into the ground and lift up on it and put a tree in the ground every 6 to 10 to 12 feet in a pattern with other tree planters. You could easily make about 100 dollars a day (which was quite a lot for then) way out remote somewhere with a crew under contract.

I can remember a forest service employee sort of putting us down for doing this kind of work and telling us he wanted to buy a home. One of my friends with a Master's degree from UCLA told him, "I have a home and a master's degree from UCLA". The man looked at him and couldn't believe him.

What he didn't understand about us is that we lived in the wilderness for "Quality of LIfe" and so we never would have to pay a mortgage because we all built our own homes on remote properties. My friend with the Master's degree is a famous musician and has been since the 1980s now. His property he was offered about 1 million dollars for during the last 10 years. But he wanted to keep it. He built the whole thing himself with no mortgages after he got his master's degree. He has played concerts all over the world including Europe, Japan, India and Nepal. So, by paying everything with cash and never getting a mortgage on anything he has been free to choose to live a life that is worth living rather than becoming a slave to a mortgage. He has been to India and Nepal at least 10 times now sometimes for months at a time and studied with masters over the years because he has never been a slave to mortgages or car payments.