Sunrise Guy
Addicted to ArboristSite
Up until a few days ago, I thought of miners as guys from big coal and mineral states who lived simple lives, all the while hating their jobs until they died of black lung or any of the myriad maladies that befall those who toil three hundred feet underground in less than healthy conditions. I never thought miners were the types to think heavy thoughts or expound rhapsodically on their profession.
That changed, profoundly, in one ten-minute period, as I sat listening to various CNN reporters interview miners in West Virginia. I heard that which bonded me to those toiling underground. I had instant enlightenment. How? Why?
I heard these miners talking about why they mine, and they expressed a shared sentiment: They work the mines because they love the excitement of being someplace where no one has ever been before, since the beginning of time. They enjoyed the sense of discovery as they chipped away rock after rock from the coal seams and saw fossils and other things which gave them a sense of being immersed in an underground river of time. Many said that they left the mines for a bit, but all said they were pulled back by the missed excitement and wonder.
I identified with what I heard them say. When I'm sixty feet up in a tree, I see things that few will ever see. I have seen rare birds land a few inches from me and pay me no mind: I am in their territory, and to perceive me as a danger just doesn't compute, for them. I have seen arboreal lizards investigating the canopies of trees, catching insects on small branches, all the time unseen, unnoticed, from far below. I have seen vistas spread out before me of the winding rivers and rolling hills of Texas that cannot be seen from anywhere except from the branches in which I hang, suspended by a half-inch diameter rope of polyester and nylon. I have been attached to an eighty foot pine by only two spikes on my boots and a six foot length of rope around my waist as I remove this tree's top that rises twenty feet above me. With a bad pull of the tag line from my man on the ground, I am assured a painful death as a thousand pounds of wood comes crashing down on me. I gun my chainsaw, though, and power its cutters through that tree's top, separated from those same cutters by only a few inches. They can cut me, or my rope, my lifeline, even as they take out the top of the pine. Even so, I do my job, and take enjoyment in that doing.
My profession is usually ranked as the third deadliest job in the US. Coal mining comes in at number five. Who would want to work these gigs? Why would they do it?
I think it is as the miners have said and as I know it to be: To do a job and feel that you are somewhere doing something others cannot do, or will not do, is exciting. Knowing that you are seeing things others will not see adds to the excitement and satisfaction. The miners have coal seams in their veins as I now have tree sap in mine. We are brothers of quick-death professions, and those professions warn us of the hazards laying in wait to harm us, even as they seduce us with that sense they offer, that we are in a special place, a very special place, as we do our jobs.
-Miles
That changed, profoundly, in one ten-minute period, as I sat listening to various CNN reporters interview miners in West Virginia. I heard that which bonded me to those toiling underground. I had instant enlightenment. How? Why?
I heard these miners talking about why they mine, and they expressed a shared sentiment: They work the mines because they love the excitement of being someplace where no one has ever been before, since the beginning of time. They enjoyed the sense of discovery as they chipped away rock after rock from the coal seams and saw fossils and other things which gave them a sense of being immersed in an underground river of time. Many said that they left the mines for a bit, but all said they were pulled back by the missed excitement and wonder.
I identified with what I heard them say. When I'm sixty feet up in a tree, I see things that few will ever see. I have seen rare birds land a few inches from me and pay me no mind: I am in their territory, and to perceive me as a danger just doesn't compute, for them. I have seen arboreal lizards investigating the canopies of trees, catching insects on small branches, all the time unseen, unnoticed, from far below. I have seen vistas spread out before me of the winding rivers and rolling hills of Texas that cannot be seen from anywhere except from the branches in which I hang, suspended by a half-inch diameter rope of polyester and nylon. I have been attached to an eighty foot pine by only two spikes on my boots and a six foot length of rope around my waist as I remove this tree's top that rises twenty feet above me. With a bad pull of the tag line from my man on the ground, I am assured a painful death as a thousand pounds of wood comes crashing down on me. I gun my chainsaw, though, and power its cutters through that tree's top, separated from those same cutters by only a few inches. They can cut me, or my rope, my lifeline, even as they take out the top of the pine. Even so, I do my job, and take enjoyment in that doing.
My profession is usually ranked as the third deadliest job in the US. Coal mining comes in at number five. Who would want to work these gigs? Why would they do it?
I think it is as the miners have said and as I know it to be: To do a job and feel that you are somewhere doing something others cannot do, or will not do, is exciting. Knowing that you are seeing things others will not see adds to the excitement and satisfaction. The miners have coal seams in their veins as I now have tree sap in mine. We are brothers of quick-death professions, and those professions warn us of the hazards laying in wait to harm us, even as they seduce us with that sense they offer, that we are in a special place, a very special place, as we do our jobs.
-Miles
