User:The Interior/Now You're Logging!

Now You're Logging! is a 1978 graphic novel by Canadian author and cartoonist Bus Griffiths. The first page introduces "A story based on logging in 'The Hungry Years,' {the 1930's} and about those complex, and intriguing characters, the loggers, products of a special type of work, and way of life... steam and gas donkeys, high-lead logging, and the big timber of the rain forests of the fog-shrouded Pacific coast... Men who took a pride in their work and skills, and who were artists in their own right."

The story's hero, Al Richards, begins as a returning member of Jim Bradley's logging outfit, a rigger working under the new "push", or foreman Art Donnegan. Al has many adventures on the job, including rescuing a crew member who fell into a canyon, learning to prepare a new spar (tree) under Art's tutelage, rafting a winch donkey across a raging river, and scouting out a new patch of timber for his own operation. Griffiths documents the specific rigging systems used by the crew and explains logging terms along the way, such as: hooking, rigging slinger, turn, road, straw line, skidder, pass line, tail blocks, tail hold, snag, windfall, caulked boots, etc. On a break from the job, Al and partner Red explore an abandoned turn of the century logging camp, complete with miles of decaying flume, and meet a family of homesteader/fishermen, including WW1 veteran father Jim Brown and daughter Debra who becomes Al's love interest. The book ends with Art offering Al his position running the crew, and Al's proposal to Debra on returning to their property to log some seaside big timber for the Browns.

"We're good at what we do, and we know it. I guess that's what makes us loggers, such a proud, cocky bunch of bastards!" -Art Donnegan, p. 106

References

Glob: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/10/11/graphic-scenes-now-youre-logging-and-the-cage/

Comics Journal: http://www.tcj.com/now-youre-logging/

Labour, Gordon Hak: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25149564?uid=3739400&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21103082559977

BC Provincial Museum Material Review: http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17016/22964