Patrick George: The Day of the Lumberjack
By: JT S


From the time that he got up to the time that he fell asleep later that night Patrick George was just having an off day. Instead of waking up at his usual time to go to work Patrick accidently ended up pushing the snooze button to many times. Before he knew it he had already slept twenty-five minutes after his usual wake up time. So instead of being able to take his time in the morning he had to rush to be able to punch into work on time. What Patrick George didn’t know was that his whole day would be all messed up.

It was about 5:00 a.m. by the time Patrick was able to get out of bed and to start getting ready for work that day. He will need to be leaving for work soon if he wanted to get there on time. If anyone was not on time the rest of the team would leave without them. The reason he had to be at work so early was because he was a lumberjack. These lumberjacks worked for about ten hours a day. They liked to work from daybreak to a few hours before the sun went down at night.

It took Patrick George about forty-five minutes to drive the 20 miles to their station for check-in. He had to drive from his log cabin in Alberta, Canada to the station. From there they would gather into their work trucks and ride to their job sites. It was really crammed with all of the workers. They had to also bring all of their tools. These tools included everything they would need, from axes to chainsaws.

To make a good impression on his boss Patrick always liked to get there the earliest. They didn’t have to start until seven o’clock, but Patrick George liked to get there at about 6:45. Once he got there he just sat in his truck until any of his co-workers got there. By the time everyone was ready to go it was about five minutes after seven o’clock. They had to gather up all of their tools and pile into the trucks. Once they got all of the tools into the trucks the workers all got into the trucks. Patrick George’s favorite place to sit until they got to their job site was the back of the truck. He liked to sit and watch all of the trees and other types of plants as they passed them.

It took them a while to get to the area of trees that they were assigned for that day. They would have to spend all day to clear that area of land, but they all came ready to work. Patrick drew the short straw and he would be the one who would have to be harnessed and go to the top of the tree. When they got to their job site for the day is was about seven thirty.

Once they got everything unpacked and hooked up it was time for Patrick to get strapped into his harness. They didn’t have a cherry picker to use so they had to use their own way to get up to the top. What Patrick would have to do is as he climbed the tree trunk he would use his metal hook to hook onto the trees branches.

Patrick started by putting on his harness. It took a while to put on the harness because the one that they had was “supposed” to be really safe and that it would not come undone. After he got on he started to get on with his ascent. The hardest part of the climb was the start, but once he got going he was on a roll. He was about middle way up when he started to notice that something was wrong.
He decided to forget about it and he kept moving forward. He got another ten feet up when he started to notice the same thing that he had before. At this point he decided to stop and try to figure out what he thought was going wrong. To figure out what was going on he would have to drop his hacksaw. He unhooked it and then told his co-workers that he was dropping it. After he dropped it he started to look at his harness. That is when he saw it.
He was already too high in the air to try and climb down the tree, so his only hope is to try and stay on a sturdy branch until help came. Before Patrick knew it his harness had already came undone. He was freefalling from about 50 feet in the air and there was no hope left. The only thing he could try is to land and only have minor injuries. He was yelling at his co-workers the whole way down, but it didn’t help him at all. Within a few seconds Patrick George hit the ground making a loud THUD.
As soon as he hit the ground you could hear the loudest crack ever. That was the sound of Patrick’s back breaking. He couldn’t move at all, he had been paralyzed from the neck down. He just lay there, sprawled out on the ground with no hope to hang on too. By the time the rest of the workers had gotten to him his lungs were already half filled with blood. Since they were so far into the forests they would not be able to get help in time before Patrick had passed. So they just stood there looking at their friend until his time came. It wasn’t long until that time eventually came and he had left them.