I'm Logger Dan and You're Not- Lessons from a Lumberjack
“I’m Logger Dan and You’re Not”, that was the closing remark we chose to end the few videos I took of Dan Carlson plying his trade- either cutting down trees or sharpening saws. A lot of wild claims came out of his mouth, but this declaration was most certainly true. He was an American original, a trusted friend, a gifted artist, and was as quick his wit as he was with a saw. He helped Camp Mishawaka more than most will ever know- felling problem trees, re-wiring a trailer, or picking a lock to which we had lost the key. “Don’t ask me how I know how to do that,” he said. He died last week. Peacefully, I am told, in his sleep.
If you ever met Logger Dan (born Danny Gene Carlson on December 8th 1941), you would have learned a lot about him in the first few minutes. You would have learned about how he still held the push up record for the Navy (unvervified), or about the time he won the Bigfork, MN to Effie, MN bike race in record time (no one has ever heard of the race) or, that at one time he was ranked as one of the best horseshoe pitchers in the nation. (I admit, he was exceptionally skilled at that last one.) Or he might have told you about the time he walked up and introduced himself to Marilyn Monroe in the wings of a USO show. But more than that, you would have learned that he was a kind hearted, generous man who was always willing to help.
I can’t exactly remember how Logger Dan came to be a fixture at Camp for more than 20 years. He was part of a crew that came to harvest some downfall after a storm one year and never left. We always had a problem he could fix, and not just a tree. He welded, did light construction, engine repair and just about anything else we needed. He was especially good at recycling- or rather repurposing- things that might be lying around Camp. Sometimes he even re-purposed new things if he had a vision of how it might be put to better use.
He was loyal to people and his equipment- most notably to his fleet of automobiles that he put into service on a rotational basis like most people cycle through shoes. I think he took it as a challenge to keep these vehicles running and was always tweaking this or that to make sure it carried him home safely. He drove with both feet- one always resting on the brake. When I suggested that he was wearing out the brakes by doing this he cited his time as a race car driver for developing the habit. Fuel economy was not high on his list.
To hear him tell it, Logger Dan had owned service garages, worked on airplanes, did auto body repair, and countless other jobs over the span of his life’s work, but mostly he cut trees. He worked the big woods before automation, armed with a heavy saw and pickaroon. Logger was the last generation of woodsman that made his living in the woods and from the woods. Nothing went to waste. He burned wood to heat his home and it wasn’t uncommon to see him leaving Camp with a vehicle full of maple chunks that anyone else would have struggled to load. Even as he approached 80 years of age, I labored to keep up with him when it came to cleaning up a tree. In no small way, he reminded me of Yukon Cornelius from Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer- and when he wore the fleece cap it was like he had stepped off the screen and into our lives.
I don’t think he had a particularly easy life, but he maintained an easy way about himself. He used colorful expressions and dispensed superlatives and adjectives like verbal candy. Everything was “incredible”, or “amazing”- and quite often he used these words to describe a feat of his own! As I broke the news of his death to the generations of outdoor crew employees that he worked with here a common response followed. “Man, that guy taught me a lot. “There will never be another like him.” If given the chance to comment on his own demise, I suspect he would offer much the same assessment. Never missing a chance to remind us that, in the end, he was Logger Dan, and we’re not.
Safe travels my friend.
