Wolves took down deer working from the beach & up drainages
They creep around huge spruce & cedars & ambush
Wintering deer in among windfall & beach drift wood,
With snow melt & deer moving inland wolves moved there too
Pockets of wintering in the central part of island had deer
That never saw the ocean; the wolves took them there too
A vast sea the size of Delaware of forest rippled over mountains & rose up
From glacier made valleys, spruce, hemlock & cedar waving
Slowly as rain forest Foresters came & began hiking deep into the woods
Up creeks & on out to ridges that stretched into the alpine
Laying out roads & designating units of “harvest’ that
Laid out the boundaries of what would come next

Wolves took down deer working from the beach & up drainages
Loggers came soon & began to build roads first out of Craig & Klawok
Then Hollis, Thorne Bay, Naukati, Coffman Cove, Hydaberg
Cook shacks & bunk houses
Began to appear, company stores sold snacks & cigarettes
& Copenhagen cans, each camp had home guards where a wife or
Two appeared, State land came up for sale & like the 1800s
Houses began to appear, rough at first then nicer,

Wolves took down deer working from the beach & up drainages
Fishermen were already there mostly in Craig & native Klawok
And Hydaberg, but as houses sprang up there were more around the camps
Bunkhouses, still housed men & float planes took them to “town”
Ketchikan the first city in southeast Alaska as you go north
Scores of bars & women & two days if you could remember it was
Later called fun, no one thought it strange to send a float plane for pizza

Men took down large trees, working from the beach & up drainages
The pulp mills have ate up the Forrest around Ketchikan, began
To take down rafts of logs from the Archipelago of Islands on the
North American coast, the long straight grains of Sitka spruce that
Made everything from pianos & violins & were prized ships spars but
Then the pulp mill produced fiber slop & spun the forest towers
In to rayon for skirts, pant suits & blazers & all the while the late rubber
Had hit the road in the lower 48 with rayon strands woven in the tires as

Men took down large trees, working from the beach & up drainages
Building roads & made their way to head waters & started working on the slopes
The pulp mill ran three shifts, & the loggers came to town & still

Wolves took down deer working from the beach & up drainages
The roads began out of every logging camp from & gradually worked
Toward each other & the central part of the island, each logging camp
On the island sea locked & remote, began to become villages with
Wives & children & schools & little churches, & barged in grocery’s

Men took down large trees, working from the beach & up drainages
Around the island & roads built of island rock & granite began to connect
And logging was money & jobs were plentiful & loggers tramped
Their camp for another with the same pay each time a Camp supervisor
Did any bull shit thing, or too many mistakes were made in the rigging
& with the bull shit thing there was more danger & they began calling themselves
Tramps, with nose bag of thermos & gear & duffle bags, a sharp set of cork boot some of them
Worked the like work, all over the Archipelago Island all making various stops
Some of them set chokers some of them worked rigging & some of them fell trees,
Some of them made it their life & some of them made money to go to college so they could
Have a life; one timber faller put himself through dentistry school
& bought cabin cruiser & he came back with his wife to the islands every summer
For thirty years, long after the bunkhouses & cook shacks were gone
Fixing folks teeth, & while tourists came to catch halibut & salmon &
Men took down fewer large trees, working from the beach & up drainages

Big black bears always took salmon working from the beach & up drainages
Splashing of spawning fish big Coho’s & Sockeye & pink salmon as well, while
The big belly draggers were noted in the outdoor press as largest
In the world & anyone could come take them from all over the world
And the bear population that outnumbered people for a time came down
Without much notice & the locals took few bears for food & generally in the
Spring, & the press became advertisements & the lodges began
To sell package tours with a Suburban & an Island map, & with various expertise
Hunters came & bought tags & shot bears in the spawning streams
& drank liquor & wounded bears & shot sows with cubs
& drank liquor & shot bear, it didn’t take too many years before everyone
Stopped seeing belly draggers & the State sealers began sealing to the out of state
Hunter boys, teddy bear sized bears & sows were taken & the orphaned cubs showed back up
At the lodges & the ardent bear hunters began to call this wrong, & the State in time
Changed the rules after, a lot of the damage was done, on
Prince of Wales Island where nature was constant before 1954
& the roads began to connect, & the logs could go to the big mill in Craig & little
Mills all over the island, as the pulp mills were shutting down forty years later
When they & some of the foresters saw a diminishing end of the thought of never ending supply of
Men taking down large trees, working from the beach & up drainages

Where now a patch work of timber patches made a mosaic from the air
No need to plant trees in the rain forest land, the trees came back,
The big trees were gone forever if the clearcuts were rotated every 50-100 years, like well
Like, Aldo said, like cabbage patches & like cabbage patch kids, boys & girls with degrees
Showing how this could all be managed & Forest plans were planned
& all the nations’ laws were mentioned & it was still that,
Men taking down large trees, working from the beach, & up drainages but it was harder to do
Largely because folks started to sue, it seemed to those that were there,
As a carpet of trees came back in five years’ time, jobs were plentiful & the loggers
& Forest Service workers began to stay & villages became incorporated
& politics were added to the industry of timber, some became fishermen
And some started little mills, the road became pavement over time &

Wolves took down deer working from the beach & up drainages
& the villagers could trap, beaver otter marten & wolves
& kill deer for winter meat, salmon & halibut already canned up was larder as well
Grocery stores once distant, then became closer for some
Protein was often immediate & had to be taken,
Like taking a coat along on a cold winters day
every house hold was allowed five deer per person & all the
Salmon & halibut they could catch, & then in time some noticed not as many deer
& thought of the wolves & first blamed them, while seeing winter range
Disappearing on trucks, no one noticed dead fawns that had nothing in winter to eat
Only a few saw boatloads of bucks coming in on Charter boats,
No one saw wolves killed on the beach just for fun,
Winters snow depth not letting them out of inland stands of refuge, & the
Islands of refuge became deer holding pens, this all came after time while

Men took down large trees, working from the beach & up drainages
Slowly at first, tourists had arrived every summer
& lodges appeared; charter boats caught the “Barn Door” Halibut
& pictures were taken & no one thought of these three hundred pound
Flat fish as the egg laying mothers that kept up the stock & behemoths were
Caught & the pictures continued to be taken & the stock started to slow,
The commercial fishermen were limited to week long seasons & tourists from
Texas & tourist from Tennessee, tourists form California, New York, Minnesota
Came with thousands of dollars to spend & Chicken Bay which was named for
The good eating “chicken halibut,” fish of around twenty pounds
The chickens & their mothers were taken away &
The big fish were all distant, at a several hour boat ride,
The summer brought traveler halibut from the far north & villager long lined a year’s catch but
The charter boats & everyone else took the big ones & the stocks began to wane,
& after arguing for some time the biologists
Got a handle on this & there were less charter boats just in time, still
Wolves took down deer working from the beach & up drainages
Clearcuts in mosaic grew back plentiful forage, strings of mild winters
Let deer slip through wolves & men & for a good time deer numbers were up,
The roads adjacent to clearcuts were for a time shooting galleries each fall
After hunting the alpine the deer lower down could be found in the clearcuts
And a rest from the road & nice buck would fall, the rut would deliver more &
Boats following the beach could come back with a boat load of bucks
To round out each families take, then charter folks began to do this

Men took down large trees, no longer working up from the beach
The drainages were logged leaving a bath tub ring of harvest around all the island’s creeks
Save the centermost part & the Karta wilderness, & the Honker divide
The inner portions of timber taken were deer winter range & soon there was
Less & less of it, more roads more hunters less deer, & now

There were less wolves to take down less deer working from the beach & up drainages
& men took to killing wolves, no longer working up from the beach, but working up roads,
& no longer for pelts in the winter, men took to killing wolves because they were wolves
& they also ate deer, & the fewer wolves became few wolves in the central part of the Island
That save the beach road on the Clarence straight was surrounded by pavement,
& 4 wheel drive pickups could speed from side to side of the island
& crawl up most roads until deep December & hiking in & setting snares became
Predator control for the few that warred on wolves, and called themselves the wolf patrol,
Some biologists called it the end of the wolves upcoming, & others said they’d be alright,
but when they started to investigate the wolves were down to a few,
& the few became three & the dens were all empty save one
& it would be some time even then if measures were taken, though none are planned until
wolves once again took down deer working from the beach & up drainage’s
& if the Central Island wolves disappear; there are still packs to the north though not very many,
And packs to the south, though not very many, & maybe they’ll come back
Just like the halibut and bear the biologists disagreed &
Some say the winter range can be logged & others say it can’t,
3 or four wolves taking down deer working from the beach & up drainages
& now there are court cases & lawyers & judges to decide whether
Wolves will still take down deer working from the beach & up drainages.