Timber and Towers
After sixteen months working high-rigging lines in remote mountains, Harlan Drake returns home to find his uncle gone, the woodstove cold, and his teenage sister bartering hand-carved wooden utensils to keep her little brother fed. Uncovering a scheme of forged mortgages and fraudulent liens, Harlan uses satellite logs and corporate records to protect his family and reclaim their home.
Fictional story. Contains depictions of family hardship, financial fraud, and child neglect resolved through legal and practical measures.Chapter 1: The Cold Stove
Sixteen months on high-rigging repair lines in the Idaho backcountry will train a man to respect silence, but not the kind that sits cold in your own doorway.
I pulled my rusty pickup onto the gravel lane of our timber parcel in the Cascade foothills around five o'clock on a sharp November evening. The engine coughed once before shutting down, leaving the mountain air crisp and smelling of pine resin and oncoming snow. For over a year, I had worked sixty-hour shifts on steel pylons above frozen canyons, hauling cable and replacing transformers so high the clouds felt close enough to touch. Every night in my bunk, I had survived on one thought: returning to our five-acre homestead, seeing the chimney smoke rising over the fir tree canopy, and hearing the steady hum of my uncle's sawmill work.