Posted by Chris Davis on Saturday, April 02, 2005 at 3:12AM :
I was flipping through channels before going to bed and saw a few minutes of a nature or back woods adventure show. They were filming up in Alaska, I think on the Cook Inlet...
The film crew was spending a few days at the homestead of their bush pilot's parents, both of whom were in there 70's now and still living alone off the land. They had moved up there in the early 1970's to build a homestead and try commercial fishing on the inlet. They brought with them a Dodge Powerwagon to help clear the land. It was still there, parked out back with a log skidder, and appeared to still be operational, although they didn't have any footage of it running, they did put up some old still photos of the early work they had done with it.
I found myself looking at all the welded on "farm" (or in this case "bush") accessories and thinking about all the work it would take to bring the truck back to "stock"... then I realized that it probably told a better story just how it was, years of hard work in a beautiful but rugged land that demanded the best in people and equipment.
Got to turn in now, but thought I'd share my late night (or early morning) musings.
Chris Davis