The Robert's brothers are one of the largest landholders in my small town, Ashfield. Land is power, and they have a lot. They also operate a fairly large forestry and wood refining business.
I think everyone has a beef with the family from some time in the past. They allegedly harvested several acres of my family's forest a few decades back. This gives them a rather dark history, and the sawmill they own will not make you feel any better about the merits of their business. Ocea has never had a look at this site, the town police look the other way, and the site is far out of the eye of game wardens and the like. My father calls it Mordor.
Suffice it to say that I am pulled toward the creepy work-hazard like a moth toward flame. All summer I found myself traveling down the rutted road to the Roberts Brother's sawmill. Padding along silently in the feet of sawdust, turning rusty corners on improvised walkways, I felt a sense of kinship with the place.
Was it the reflection of my inner-creep that I was seeing? Was it the danger of the place: shards of glass left in second story windows over work zones? Perhaps it was the accelerated cycle of forest death and birth, symbolized by the mounds of sawdust and the bright green corrugated tin.
Or maybe it was just the graphic beauty of the place, a place etched out like a wood-cut. Maybe there was no occult force drawing me back again and again. Maybe it just felt like that.
I think everyone has a beef with the family from some time in the past. They allegedly harvested several acres of my family's forest a few decades back. This gives them a rather dark history, and the sawmill they own will not make you feel any better about the merits of their business. Ocea has never had a look at this site, the town police look the other way, and the site is far out of the eye of game wardens and the like. My father calls it Mordor. 
Suffice it to say that I am pulled toward the creepy work-hazard like a moth toward flame. All summer I found myself traveling down the rutted road to the Roberts Brother's sawmill. Padding along silently in the feet of sawdust, turning rusty corners on improvised walkways, I felt a sense of kinship with the place.
Was it the reflection of my inner-creep that I was seeing? Was it the danger of the place: shards of glass left in second story windows over work zones? Perhaps it was the accelerated cycle of forest death and birth, symbolized by the mounds of sawdust and the bright green corrugated tin. 
Or maybe it was just the graphic beauty of the place, a place etched out like a wood-cut. Maybe there was no occult force drawing me back again and again. Maybe it just felt like that. 
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