hi

ities Pile

This week:

Milton muddles on

through The Plan

itton Jovial’s mind
slowly wandered back
to the task at hand. Still,

the pulp chip export issue nagged
him.

Making this whole investment
scheme work depended on exports,
it seemed. He would lose $55 a
cubic metre selling his pulp chips
on the domestic market, and that
would put his whole logging and
milling operation in-the red. On
the other hand, exporting chips
was one thing. But lumber
exports... He was beginning to feel
a little nervous,

"Exports," he muttered. "I'll lose
money if don’t export chips. And
now I’m going to lose money if I
do export lumber to the good old
US, of A. Is there any way to
win?" Causing Jovial concern was
the fact that a rising Canadian
dollar stacked on top of the 15
percent export tariff meant nobody
in the U.S. was interested in buy-
ing B.C. lumber. A disturbing
trend,

"It’s ironic," he mused. "I pushed
for that Memorandum of Under-
standing to protect my interests at
home... What ever posseSséd me to
come to Canada to invest?"

There wasn’t a good answer.
Jovial would never consider a

decision of his own a mistake.
"Jovial’s decision" and "mistake"
were words no one would ever
dare put together in a single sen-
tence.

"Maybe God’s getting even for
that Memorandum," he said aloud.

"What's that?"

"Squish! How tong have you... "

Jovial was a little shaken. Herby
Squish wasn’t in the habit of using
his own office when Milton Jovial
was in town. Why that would be,
Jovial simply couldn't understand.
"Pll have to be more careful," he
thought.

"I said... Good! What a manage-
ment plan..."

Squish, pleased with Jovial’s
assessment, explained that it was
nothing to get excited about. More
or less a standard format with a
few names and numbers changed.
"It’s just the basics," he told
Jovial. "The real details will begin
laking. shape once you begin cut-
ting trees."

Pretending to be intent on the
Management and Working Plan,
Jovial wandered to a side table and
continued where he left off. "Silvi-
culture... Section 2.241, Basic..."
As he began to read, his voice
trailed off into silent thought.

Jovial Logging Inc. is committed

to maintaining a basic forest
management program on the
licence area, The Company will
ensure that all areas harvested
under the licence agreement obtain
free-growing status. "A fine plan,"
he said aloud. "Wonder how much
free-growing costs?" he said to
himself. "Wonder what free-grow-
ing is?"

All basic silviculture will be
conducted in accordance with
current Regional procedures, he
continued to read, pertaining to
stocking standards, free growing
surveys and pre-harvest silviculture
prescriptions... in concurrence with
the Kalum TSA Silviculture Strategy.

A little confusing, but nothing
compared to the test of the
"basics". Jovial scanned sub-sec-
tions titled Stand Establishment,
Site Preparation, Species Selection,
Pre-Harvest Silviculture Prescrip-

tion, Tree Improvement and, as

though these titles didn’t cover

|The Way I

See It...

by Stephanie Wiebe

Sometimes people become so
close to each other that complete
conversations are unnecessary.
Just the other day, I said to my
husband, "Hey, there was a little

n

"Yes, I took care of it," he
answered. "But yesterday I saw

"I know, wasn’t that great?"

"Uh huh. Well, 1 guess 1711 — "

"Yeah, me too."

This Reader’s-Digest-con-
densed-version of conversation is
acquired after years of knowing
another person welt. I figure we
must save hours of time, not
finishing sentences, already
knowing what the other person is
going to say. Sometimes this is
comfortable, but sometimes it’s
not.

One method I use to upset this
unfinished sentence habit is to
casually throw in the odd un-
expected statement, like: "By the
way, your mom phoned to say
that she’s chained up your father

“ inside a dark basement reom, and

she’s running away with a calen-
dar salesman from Quesnel." He
never finishes that one for me.
But occasionally these half-
conversations come in handy.
Sometimes the precise words I
want to say just aren’t there, and
it's convenient to have someone
who actually uriderslands what f
say — of don’t say. And then,
we do save all that valuable time.

Along these same lines are the
conversations spoken in meaning-
less lingo that would make no
sense were there not some in-
visible form of communication.
At the family breakfast table, my
mother once said, "Could some-
one please go to the whatchama-
callit and get me a thingamajig?”

As the family stared, my brother-
in-law wordlessly got up from the
lable, went outside and around
the house to the crawl space
entrance, climbed in, and came
back out with an empty box.
Returning, he handed it to her.

As we looked on, amazed, she
smiled and said, "Thanks." He'd
known exactly what she was
talking about. This is similar to
the way that aliens communicate.

But if you're not alien, or
related to a person by blood or
Matriage, sometimes an
unfinished sentence can hang in
the air for years to come. Not
long ago, someone said to me,
"You know, I really —- no, never
mind."

This sort of thing really gets
me. You really what? You really
think I’m loud, rude and ob-
noxious? You really fike living in
this galaxy? You really wish
Elvis would come back from the
dead and sing a duet with Cher
on your front porch? WHAT?

When this happens — though I

don’t think about it constantly —
I do wonder about the rest of the
sentence, The person who left
that sentence dangling is not
someone I see every day. For all
I know this guy is walking all
over town, dropping unfinished
sentences right and left down
Lakelse Avenue or Kalum Street.
"Hey why don’t you — " "Some-
day we oughta — " "Maybe I
could ~~ naw, never mind.”
Throughout Terrace, curious
crazed residents are listening and
saying, "What? What) WHAT?
Who JS that guy???"

Perhaps there’s even a mob
forming, @ potentially riotous
gang of angry sentence-finishing
perfectionists, driven to extreme
verbal group outbursts by the
casual "leave ’em up in the air"
attitude of this man. They're
chanting, "WHAT?! WHAT?!

WHAT?!"

Meanwhile, this guy is happily
sauntering along, probably whis-
tling, oblivious to the trail of flab-
bergasted questioning people he's
leaving behind, or the mob which
is viclously hunting him down as
you read this. Or he may notice
the crowd forming, and think, Oh
wow, a party. I wonder if I could
— naw, never mind.

Or maybe it’s only me. Maybe
being a writer, [ have this bizarre
imagination that runs wild with
possibilities when faced with an
unfinished thought. Like every
story should have an ending.
Like, wouldn’t it get on your
nerves if 1 didn’t —

Naw, never mind.

Forestry
Insights

by Tod Strachan, in consultation with Rod Amold and Doug Davies

everything Mother Nature ever
created, one called Other Points.
"Basically," he thought, this
means I will plant trees where I
cut them, ASAP... In accordance
with the Regional Stocking Stan-
dards procedure letter of January,

1991, And to do this, he would -

begin an "aggressive seed collec-
tion program".

Site preparation prior to
replanting, he learned, would be on
a "site-specific" basis and might
include broadcast and/or spot burn-
ing of logging debris. Or, perhaps,
some form of scarification.

"What’s scarification?"™ he said
aloud.

"It just means..." Squish
searched for something simple.
"Like tilling the soil so the trees
will grow better."

"Oh! Like farming?"

"That’s the intent,"
smiled.

Getting back to the plan, Jovial
discovered that something called
species selection would follow "the
current Regional Stocking Stan-
dards guidelines". Obviously some-
thing to do with planting the
"right" kind of trees.

And he learned pre-harvest
silviculture was something you do
before you cut trees. "This is a big
one," Squish explained. "We need
to provide an overall picture in our
Five Year Development Plan, and
then a more specific plan before
we begin harvesting each indivi-
dual cut-block. Something called
"Regional procedures’ are the
guiding light."

"I see," Jovial answered vaguely.
And then, in all seriousness, "Tree
improvement. ] read something
somewhere about growing square
trees..."

"Not likely." Squish held his
temper... but he hated days when
Jovial tried to help. He often won-
dered if the silvicultural compre-
hension of his boss surpassed, or
even equalled, that of the spruce
weevil.

Maintaining a seriousness to

Squish

Wednesday, March 6, 1991. A7

match Jovial’s, he continued: "An
example of tree improvement,
might be where you develop some-
thing called a ’seed orchard’. In a
seed orchard, you try to develop
hardier, more valuable species of
trees.

"But," Squish added, "you don’t
need to worry about it. You’re not
going to do it."

"I see," Jovial mumbled.

eturning to the report,
R Other Points, he found,

included only a small
section of text. Here he was com-
mitting himself to "specialized
harvesting methods" on high-cle-
vation sites where the existing
understorey was suitable to provide
the next stand of trees. And what
was apparently a housekeeping
item, Landing Rehabilitation. This,
according to the plan, included the
burning of accumulated debris
around landing sites.

"Okay," said Jovial, putting down
the report. "I understand my
‘basic’ silviculture commitment.
Now explain this next section,
"Incremental Silviculture’."

"Well," Squish began. "It’s not
really all that complicated.”

He told Jovial how they were
going to attempt to increase the
Annual Allowable Cut of his forest
licence by progressively replacing
areas of deciduous growth with
coniferous stands.

"This won't make any immediate
difference,” he explained. "But
sixty or cighty years down the
road, it’s conceivable you might be
granted a substantial increase in
your Annual Allowable Cut."

The veins in Jovial’s neck began
to bulge. "Eighty years?” he
stormed. "I'll be dead in forty. I'm
an investor... An honest investor
working on my own retirement
plan, Not my children’s inheri-
tance..."

Squish quickly grabbed his cof-
fee mug and headed for the door.
"It’s ten o'clock," he announced.
"Coffee break."

CT Scanner fund
halfway to finish

CT Scanner fund raising in
1990 exceeded expectations, but
there’s still a distance to go. A
report issued by the R.E.M. Lee
Hospital Foundation last week
states that close to $300,000 was
raised last year, $50,000 more
than the foundation’s target.

This is cause for some optim-
ism. If 1991 efforts equal last

year’s performance, the target of
$600,000 could be reached by the
end of this year,

Current fund raising plans call
for a June "Celebrity Auction"
(artist Roy Vickers may partici-
pate again) and a 1992 version of
the foundation’s successful Cash
Calendar.

‘oy