Philly's Bridge: And Other Northwest Stories

Philly's Bridge: In the blazing heat of an Indian summer, five members of a ragtag woodsworking cooperative from the small town of Glacier, Washington set out to prove that old fashioned methods of treating roadside vegetation are a better alternative to the Forest Service's preference for spraying deadly poisons. Kicked back around campfires under a canopy of stars, their efforts hardly feel sacrificial, taking communion with potato chips and beer in the storied deeps of the forest. At the end of the contract they reward themselves with a backpacking trip to the high country, where the true meaning of sacrifice, or a reckoning with fate, is the last lesson one of them will learn.

Whose Woods These Are: A young man with a backpack and a mind filled with myths ventures to the valley of his family's past which he'd only heard spoken in whispers. What he finds there is nothing like the history he'd hoped for, and in fact is a dark revelation, a landscape of violence, self-destruction, and perhaps, some said, even murder. A grizzled old logger tries to ease the boy's pain in learning the truth of his heritage, softening the portrait of a brutal grandfather by offering the balm of forgiveness. Overcome by the images of beatings and bears and rituals beyond understanding, young Will returns to the solace of mountains, where he finds his own truth by the side of a river in the benevolent heart of the wild.