This story is incredible

It describes the life style and working conditions Ed van Zeeland finds himself in, in a remote logging camp. He alternately is a tree planter, compass man, timber cruiser and road lay out man, and this thrilling, fascinating, heart-stopping narrative follows him as he goes from assignment to assignment throughout British Columbia over the course of a decade.

During that era, van Zeeland experiences a life time’s worth of escapades and meets a host of eccentric characters who, like him, share indomitable courage and devotion, and an unquenchable thirst for the great outdoors and the unsurpassed beauty of nature.

His encounter with a black she-bear and more so his escape from a cougar are hair raising stories in this well written story.

It is novel is sure to intrigue anyone who has ever worked in the woods, or walked in the woods, as well as anyone who enjoys reading about different lifestyles and different careers.

There probably aren’t many Ed van Zeelands left in the world, but his world is definitely worth reading about.

Editors notes

Summary:

This is a story about living and working in some of Canada’s most remote regions. The story focuses on Ed, a woodsman who splits his time between the forest and his home in Vancouver, where his wife, Anna, waits for him. While Ed is always happy to be reunited with Anna after weeks apart, he also falls in love with the wonders of the wild, feeling connected to the land and his companions in the forest. Tragedy sometimes strikes, and risks are around every corner, but Ed feels most alive when he is out in the wild. Through a series of vignettes, we understand the harsh, yet subtly beautiful realities of logging encampments. This book is about solidarity, brotherhood, courage, and a deep, life-altering love of nature.

Strengths:

Congratulations on finishing your manuscript, Bill! There is a lot to love about your book, but I’ll only outline a few of those elements here. First, your manuscript stands out for its exceptional depiction of living and working in nature. You skillfully write about life in the wild, and you present a nuanced account of humans’ complex relationship with the natural world. As the manuscript progresses, we get to witness different facets of this relationship, covering the good, the bad, and the ugly. For example, you portray the difficult realities of survival in the forest in this passage from page 63: In the meantime, I introduced Bruce to our world. He had never worked in the woods before, but he looked in reasonable shape. He helped us blaze the baseline and kept up fairly well when we walked back to our camp. Bruce found some nails in his belongings and came up with the idea of hammering them into a nearby tree to hang our cups, pots, pans and any other utensil with a handle of some kind. We approved the idea enthusiastically, and for the next hour we worked to make our camp a little bit more organized. We axed deep cuts into another tree and placed our plates in the grooves, so that nothing would be left on the ground. By cutting down saplings, we put a wooden railing around our camp to keep the bears out. We all knew that it would not stand up to a marauding bear, but we kept that knowledge to ourselves. You just do not take away someone’s illusions. Somehow we felt safer, and maybe the bears were still hibernating. This passage is extremely evocative. It showcases the industriousness of those who live in the woods, but it also highlights their precariousness. Despite our best efforts, our fences and innovations can’t truly keep nature out; our barriers are more about our psychology than ourmastery of nature. To add an additional layer of complexity, we see your characters use the forest as a natural resource, while maintaining a profound respect of it. In many passages, Ed even expresses a deep awe of the forest and its ecosystems. Here is another beautiful passage from page 114: “To me, trees are trees, and mountains are mountains. When you drag your arse up one mountain, there is always another and another.” “I agree with you in principle, Jim, but there’s more to it than that! There is that quiet hunger to see it all, a curiosity, an anxiety, even a fear of the unknown.” I confided. “Don’t you feel that?” I found challenge in conquering the giants of nature, the crossing of a wild river, the scaling of a mountain, the measurement of a giant Fir or Cedar, and surviving the weather which changed constantly from season to season. “No, I don’t have that feeling,” he said, shrugging his shoulders indifferently. We drove on in silence. I kept an eye on the road ahead of me but also looked at he surroundings. And although I had driven most of the route before, I found it different and fascinating every time. This is a time-honoured theme in Canadian literature, and I think you hit the nail right on the head, here. These are some of the most powerful passages in the manuscript. We can really sense the wonderment that overtakes Ed as he ventures deeper into the wilderness. In addition to the thought-provoking passages about humans’ relationship with nature, the text is full of realistic depictions of the unpredictable problems that sometimes come up in the wild, including bear attacks, a big rain soaking through all of the food, or running into a mother grizzly and her children and having to scare them off with a few rounds. Even in these gripping (and sometimes humorous) passages, you highlight beauty for us. On page 168, when Ed is face to face with a cougar, looking into its “big, powerful, amber eyes,” the readers will really sense the awe-inspiring power and beauty of nature. As it builds on the rich relationships between humans and the wild, your manuscript also beautifully portrays the rich relationships between the men who worked together in nature. Many passages depicted the playful relationships between friends. This was particularly obvious in Franky and Ed’s ongoing jokes. On page 33, when they embellished the joke about Rod’s breakfast, I could really imagine two young men goofing around. I felt the same way on page 48, when they wished each other merry Christmas from their stakes and trees. Overall, the manuscript is just a beautiful account of camaraderie in otherwise remote places. Given the depth and subtlety of those relationships, it made sense to read that Ed was sorry to leave his friends at the end of the season (p. 100).

About the Author

Ed van Zeeland is a fictional character, but he and the adventures he encounters are largely based on author William (Bill) Endert’s real life and career. Endert, who immigrated to British Columbia from the Netherlands in the 1960s, spent ten years-the best years of his life-working as a tree planter, compass man, timber cruiser, and road layout man in the woods of his adopted province, mainly for Integrated Forest Companies and Forestry Consulting in Vancouver, British Columbia. He spent that decade travelling from the Queen Charlottes to the Kootenays, and from the West Coast to the Interior, and he wrote where Men Stand Tall in order to share with readers his countless hard-to-believe experiences while also paying tribute to the beauty and grandeur of his adopted country. Twenty years ago, Endert wrote and self-published a memoir entitled, The Timber cruisers, and borrowed much of its content for this new non-fictionalized account of his life.

Widowed, he lives a not so quiet life in Sechelt, British Columbia, where he kayaked every inlet for twenty one years, and hiked every trail on the Sunshine Coast.

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