The Logging Chain

It's a commonplace that the reason that Canadians exist is to pull each other out of snowbanks... (which came first, the Canadian or the snowbank?)

Wednesday morning after Tuesday's big snowstorm, we were awakened by a rumble in front of our house. I got up to see what was going on, and there was a grader idling on our side of the road. It had likely been pressed into service as a snowplow.  On the other side, a small red SUV tipped sideways into the deep snow at the culvert of our neighbour's driveway. The driver of the car was standing beside it, raising his arms at the grader operator, who had his hands in his pockets, and was shaking his head.

It appeared to me that the car had pulled over to let the grader past, and wasn't aware that there's no shoulder on that side of the road. The driver of the car was now asking the grader to pull him out - so I hollered to Fred that we needed to find a rope or a chain, fast! A chain... both of us remembered the lost logging chain that we'd found in New Brunswick last summer, tangled with a road-killed hawk.

Throwing a cape and hat on, I rushed out to the front of the house and plunged my hand into the snowdrift at the corner of the porch, and there it still was, where it's been since we unpacked from that trip (the chain is one of those placeless things that one often sees in passing - always when there's not enough time to decide where it should better be put). Lifting the smooth heavy chain I shouted over the engine noise and beckoned. The operator plunged through the high bank of snow left by his plow on our side, took the heavy chain and gave me a "thumbs-up". Then I noticed that a small tractor with a plow had appeared (I guess it had just finished clearing our other neighbour's driveway). The chain was promptly hooked up at both ends. The appearance of the little tractor was fortuitous, because it turns out that even if the grader had possessed a chain, it is not allowed for County equipment to tow a private car! In less time than it took for me to snatch up my camera the car was hitched to the tractor, pulled back onto the road, and drove away, its driver waving happily...... only fifteen minutes after he'd tipped into the snowy ditch!

This incident is more deeply satisfying than the event itself, as it raises the memory of another logging chain... It was in Maine in 1976, during the first part of our travels with Frank Ross in the fieldwork for Canadian Nature Notebook. We had driven our two vans across a seaside meadow to the best spot for me to do a painting of the blue water and salt marsh in late afternoon light. After supper and as it was getting dark, we prepared to depart. Frank's '68 Dodge van had "positraction" on the soft turf, but one of my rear wheels began to spin, and before long the Ford Ecololine was mired.

Noticing the lights of a nearby house, Frank and I decided to ask for help, leaving Fred to do what he could with the shovel. A potter and her son welcomed us in. The only thing they had that might help was a magnificent two-metre segment of logging chain - a found treasure that decorated their living room wall. I remember it being as thick as my wrist. As they lifted it down for us we thanked them profusely and promised to take good care of it.

Hours later, when we'd finally extracted ourselves from the deep soft loam of that seaside meadow, the chain, which had been wrapped around a wheel for traction, was nowhere to be seen or felt. We returned in the morning to search again, but with heavy hearts, knocked on the door of the potter's cottage and confessed its loss. I remember that her son was not with her, having gone off to ring the bell of the village church, it being Sunday morning. I seem to remember giving her my little watercolour, but no gift could have replaced that magnificent chain, and I've always been sad about that.

Now somehow I feel a closure - as if something in the universe has come round, and here we are, with a found logging chain to pull someone out!