Plumes of red dust swirl and dissipate on the wind as a skidder drops off a load of hardwood at the hilltop landing. The dust continues to churn as a loader sorts and delimbs boles before loading an awaiting truck.

We are what we are because we are what we are, and because our Southern country is what it is. We are stark Northern people, bitten in spirit by frosts and hard winters, hampered in memory by darkness and ice, and our country is warm and sunlit and Southern, an easy-living violent land, threatened with magnolias.

Just days after SLT visited one of Anthony Colvin’s two logging jobs near Corrigan, Tex., Hurricane Rita ripped through East Texas. The eye passed just 30 miles east of Colvin’s home base, which put him on the weaker side of the storm, though the damage was still extensive.

Like a traffic cop at a busy intersection, Lee Hooker directs men and machines at the busy deck of his combined forest operations on a hot day. Hooker is very hands-on, often talking on two cell phones at the same time as he tries to keep everything humming efficiently and in rhythm.

On this sunny summer day, I’m fortunate to be in the company of Earl Edmundson, forest manager for Rock Springs Land and Timber, Inc. of Tallassee, Ala. We’re going to visit with logger David Woodfin, who has a penchant for stewardship that’s almost unheard of these days.

Ideal weather conditions helped lure about 1,300 to Vass, North Carolina September 24 for the 14th Carolina Log’n Demo and Forestry Show. Sponsored by the North Carolina Forestry Assn. (NCFA), the biennial event involved some 50 exhibitors.

Tigercat has entered into a new market segment for skidders with the release of the first production run of 604 cable skidders. The 604 is designed for valuable hardwood selective felling applications.