I read Young Men and Fire the year it was published and few books have stayed with me as well as that one.

I am doing research on a blog post for my blog “The Last Surviving” which I dedicate to ordinary people who survived extraordinary events, and are the last ones living who can tell the story (or were connected to it).

Finding that Bob Sallee is still alive these 60 years after the Mann Gulch tragedy, I would like to do a post on him and the history of Mann Gulch.

May I link to your blog? I will certainly reference it in my post.

I am sure to check this website routinely for more great quality content.

I certainly plan to read Mark Matthews’ book, but to hear Young Men and Fire described as “a flawed take” terribly disappoints me because I believe you fail to understand the significance of this great book.

For full-disclosure, I have read MacLean’s work as well as A River Runs Through It numerous times, far to many to count. Each time I have been further enriched by their value.

I will try my best to respond. Norman MacLean was a highly praised professor of Literature at U Chicago for many years. One of his specialties was the tragic form and the meaning and significance of tragedy as literature affecting our aesthetic and moral lives.

Norman MacLean was not a journalist or an historian, nor, to my knowledge, did he ever make any claim to being either one.

“A River Runs Through It” is fictionalized biography about his family. His brother, Paul, is the tragic hero of the story, one with the most admirable (“beautiful”) characteristics but one with great failings that his family tried desperately to address but failed, and Paul died “tragically” in the classical sense of that word. I recommended the book to a reading group years ago, and many present could not fathom Paul. They were angry at his self-destructive immature behavior and said they knew what they would do to change it. As if they could tell Prince Hamlet what to do about his dilemma! And even if they were successful in either case, our world would be the far lesser for it.

Young Men and Fire is MacLean’s tragedy of a far greater magnitude, all the more so as he died before he could complete it. It was his highly noble effort to take what many would call so often these TV infatuated days “catastrophe”,a Greek word, describing significantly terrible loss of numerous lives (i.e. The Challenger, 9/11, Fort Hood) and convert it into “tragedy”(i.e. lasting moral significance) by giving value and meaning to the individual lives that were lost that day (and subsequently if you include Dodge’s later death). Through art, not journalism nor history, MacLean accomplished this extraordinarily well.

To his lasting tribute, MacLean succeeded. In doing so, he created art in its highest form, tragedy in its Greek and Shakespearean sense. His historical and personal facts may be subject to question (as assuredly would those of Homer’s Iliad, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Oedipus, Shakespeare’s Richard III, Henry IV, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Miller’s The Crucible, whatever), but who for a moment would ever give up those depictions and the moral imperative they describe and diminish them as “flawed takes” because they do not accurately portray the facts?

All the subsequent books and commemorations of August 1949 Mann Gulch, which that horribly tragic event richly deserves, would lack the degree of attention they are given if it weren’t for MacLean’s effort. We will never know what great literature will survive to continue to enlighten readers centuries from now as the Greeks and Shakespeare do, but I certainly pray that Young Men and Fire does. It is far, far too valuable to be lost.

I am also very troubled and angered by the terrible condition of the memorials in Mann Gulch given the elevating, almost religious, concluding sentence of Young Men and Fire.

Thanks, The Editorial Staff

And Lester Lycklama, a McCall smokejumper, was killed on July 4, 1946 when the top portion of a ponderosa pine he was falling fell on him. The accident was on a fire near Council, Idaho.

Elizabeth Wendelin
Paper Conservator

Rudolph Wendelin… what amazing work you did!

Denise
USDA, Forest Service, Southern Research Station, Asheville NC..

Reading this very interesting article, I was reminded that there is another “timber sport” that seems to be doing quite well in various parts of the U.S. That’s “tossing the caber.” It’s a feature of many “Scottish Highland Games” but it also was done in Ireland (see below for family connection.” The sport obviously involves a large piece of wood, but there is also a logging connection, however distant (see below)

“The caber toss draws upon the distant past to establish this test of strength and skill as the king of Highland Games Heavy Events. Caber is Gaelic for tree, and lumberjacks are believed to provide the origin by turning small trees end-over-end to cross small rivers. Soon, attacking warriors started landing 20′ tree trunks against castle walls during siege, using them as crude ladders. The Caber Toss is the only event that isn’t measured for height or distance. Instead, judges score the event in a subjective manner. A perfect score occurs when an athlete is able to turn the caber end-over-end, with the caber landing in line with the athlete’s direction of momentum, resulting in a 12:00 score on an imaginary clock face. If the caber turns, but does not land straight in front of the athlete, scores between 9:00 and 3:00 are assigned. If the caber does not turn, the side judge awards a degree score up to 90°. Due to its subjective nature, and the fact that almost every competition provides a different caber, there are no records, only bragging rights.” http://www.vascottishgames.org/VSG%202009%20Athletics%20Competition.html

I have a family connection with this, recently confirmed by my 94 year old uncle. It seems that my great-grandfather died of a hernia following a caber toss. This would have been in the 1880s. “Was this back in Ireland?” I asked. “No, it was in the Chicago Stockyards,” my uncle replied. I suspect that alcohol was involved in this particular incident!

It is true that Television has not been at the LWC for a few years now. But that’s not to say that it will not return in the future. The LWC is a wonderful event with a rich history and loads of honor.

Yes, it is true that several large money/purse contests have gone to the wayside. But that trend occurred primarily during the late 1980s and in the Pacific NorthWest – this came as direct result of a down turn in the timber industry. Many of those events have returned, but the prize purses are not as large and, perhaps, many of the top athletes don’t attend those events.

The only area of the US that a return of the events did not occur was the Midwestern area; that is primarily due to exhibition or demonstration companies performing exhibitions/demostrations instead of the fair festivals hosting lumberjack sporting events. Hosting a lumberjack sporting event is a lot of work and requires a lot of effort from a lot of people. Demonstrations are not competitions and require less effort from those that host the event.

Now, with that said, the East Coast and in the South, the number of lumberjack sporting events have increased dramatically. True, the events are not large in purses, but they are plentiful and have numerous events. These events offer we hobbiests an opportunity to “get out of the house” and show case our skills on a less than national or international scale. These events are well attended by crowd and competitor alike. They are fun, fast paced, and show case the old time logging heritiage that we competitors strive to celebrate.

Beyond that, Stihl has put a substantial amount of effort into promoting it’s Stihl Timbersporst Collegiate Challenge. This event has caused an increase in the number of athletes that compete in these events and has brought many young competent competitors into the profressional ranks.

I write the above, because I disagree with the sentiment of the article written in the New York Times. I truly believe the author went into the project with a idea of what he wanted to prepare or he happened upon one of “the professionals” who performs the sport for a job. For a peson who does the sport for a living, it’s very difficult not to be negative when the larger pursed events are gone when that is what you rely upon for your livlihood. We hobbiests are as excited as ever to continue on with our sport. We will work hard to continue it’s preservation. We are celebrating a hertiage in logging that built the infastructure of what is now the modern day United States.

All the best,
Arden Cogar Jr.