Book Review: The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
Who: A truly unique tree, the indigenous Haida tribe, and a fiercely independent and idealistic logger/environmentalist.
What: A complete analysis of the circumstances, people, and environment surrounding a notorius crime.
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Where: The old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, specifically the Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia (between Seattle and Juneau)
When: The past few hundred million years, the past few millenia, the past few centuries, the past few decades, and present day.
What I liked: This book caught my eye because of the reviews that compared it to Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (which, by the way is a quick read and an excellent book). I would agree that the comparison is fair for many parts, but The Golden Spruce is certainly a longer read and much more detailed.
The things I liked most were the long stretches of the book that completely captured my imagination - the in-depth descriptions of how dynamic nature is in the old-growth forests, the brutality and circumstances surrounding the development of the region over the last thousand years, and the detailed descriptions of the logging industry. I can honestly say that I had no prior knowledge - or interest - in the logging industry prior to reading this book, but I was completely fascinated at the men and methods necessary to log trees that may be 300 feet tall (think Statue of Liberty) and 15-20 feet in diameter. For me, the most interesting parts of the book were those that described the seemingly impossible jobs and conditions that loggers endured… and the fact that it was very common for them to do those jobs hungover, drunk, high, or some combination thereof.
What I Didn’t Like: I personally don’t need a page and a half on photosynthesis - just give me the nuts and bolts and I’ll be fine. On the other hand, it probably served a purpose that I didn’t catch.
To be completely honest, I was less interested in the focal point/plot of the book than I was in the history/background/etc. of the forests and logging industry. The character development and tracking of the anatagonist, Grant Hadwin, was well-done (this is the part that is responsible for the Krakauer comparisons), but I lost interest when the story veered into the present day and away from the aforementioned topics. Overall, not much to complain about given the length of the book and the fraction I found less interesting.
Excerpt 1: “Had they been available even two hundred years ago, aerial photographs of North America would have revealed a strangely familiar landscape. Instead of the contemporary tic-tac-toe board of browns and grays and greens whose uniformity is interrupted only by the occasional wrinkle of foothills and mountain ranges, North America would have reminded us of Dark Age Europe - or perhaps the Amazon. With the exception of the Great Plains and the desert southwest, the continent would have presented a virtually unbroken carpet of forest that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Alaska. The total represents a nearly incalculable of wood - in the trillions of board feet - and yet the speed with which it has been cut, burned, and in many cases, simply squandered - is unparalleled.”
Excerpt 2: “If you run across an old photo of a man with an ax perched high in a tree, you are not looking at a faller, you are looking at the far rarer high rigger. Like the steelworkers who build skyscrapers, these men were a breed apart; they were the ones who prepared the spar trees to run high-lead cable. A high rigger’s duties included hanging the huge pulleys - three feet across and two thousand pounds - that carried the cable, and setting the guy lines…a high rigger would ‘hug’ his way up trees 250 feet high, lopping branches as he went… some high riggers would stand on the platform they had made - about as wide as a cocktail tray - and urinate into space. Once all the blocks were in place, the rigger could then rappel down; Angus [the antagonists uncle] became so adept at high-speed descents that he could throw his hat in the air at 150 feet and be on the ground when it landed.”
You’ll like this book if you like or are interested in: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, history, nature, logging, forestry, American Indian culture.
Overall Rating: 7.5. 250 pages on a fairly narrow topic that is 2/3 background and 1/3 plot appeals to a detail-oriented reader.
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