On an October afternoon, Dale Rutherford gathered with friends and family at the Barge Restaurant in Raymond, just a few miles from where he was born 99 years earlier at South Bend Hospital.

Pull Quote

‘He really lives the values of the greatest generation — he is kind, he is polite, he is respectful, and he is very hardworking.’

Frances resident Lynette Falkner

Everyone had come to see him receive the Pacific County Farm Forestry Association’s “Tree Farmer of the Year” award, and to share stories about his life. Only, Rutherford himself had left his hearing aids at home in Lebam. Chapter president Nick Somero was partway through his speech when Rutherford turned to his daughter, Nancy Salme, and her husband Brett, and asked, “Well how come nobody’s talking anymore?” The room erupted in laughter.

Not being able to hear didn’t keep Rutherford from waving to the crowd later on and offering a brief but heartfelt, “Thanks, everybody!” But even if he could have heard Somero call him the “epitome of forest [stewardship],” it seems doubtful that he would have found much more to say in the way of a response. When asked a few weeks after the luncheon how it felt to receive the award, Rutherford says, with characteristic, self-effacing cheer, “I didn’t think I deserved it, because I haven’t done anything extra special.”

“I just do my ordinary things every day,” he adds. “It’s just routine, I guess.”

Enjoying his days

At age 99, after a lifetime of laboring and sojourning in the woods, that routine still includes regularly driving to the Lebam post office in search of a conversation (or at least somebody to wave to), pruning trees on his roughly 40 acres of forestland, and feeding his cows twice a day.

“He walks that catwalk 25 feet above the cows in the manger, leans over and gets the hay… drops it down to the cows, turns around, walks back along the catwalk… and comes back down the old wooden ladder, every morning and every night,” says Nancy Salme. “And if we tried to stop him, he wouldn’t listen to us.”

None of this may feel special to Rutherford, even if he does acknowledge that he’s been at it longer than most. But it isn’t just the fact of his longevity that those closest to him find so laudable. It’s the nature of it — the modesty of his lifestyle, the consistency of his values, the spirit and ethic with which he does everything.

“Dale is one of my heroes,” says longtime family friend and Frances resident Lynette Falkner. “He really lives the values of the Greatest Generation — he is kind, he is polite, he is respectful, and he is very hardworking.”

‘I want to be like Dale’

Rex Hutchins, 78, of Menlo, used to lead forest tours for fourth-graders alongside Rutherford and the late Bob Falkner as part of the Project Learning Tree program. “I always told the kids then that when I grow up, I want to be like Dale,” he says.

“I was kind of hoping he would donate blood somewhere so I could go get some,” he adds with a laugh.

Over and over again, the Observer heard comments like this from Rutherford’s friends and family. By naming him Pacific County Tree Farmer of the Year, they intend not only to recognize his qualities as a steward of the land, but as a human being and member of the community.

Which, around these parts, overlap considerably.

Hard work by hand

Many of the life experiences that shaped Rutherford as a citizen-forester came during a time when most of the hard work in this country was still done by hand — when making it to tomorrow, or the next ridge over, in a place like Southwest Washington still took a unique combination of guts, ingenuity and endurance.

“They’d just take off… from over here on the Trap Creek side and walk clear over to Naselle,” said Brett Salme of the years Rutherford spent cruising and surveying, before many of the highways that transect the Willapa Hills even existed.

“They’d survey so far in a day, and just camp out and get up the next day and survey a little farther, and of course… nowadays… at the end of the day you hop in your truck and drive home!”

“It was a very simple life,” adds Nancy. “And he got by with what they had, and made the best of what he did.”

Youngster at the hatchery

Those early days may have been rugged and barebones, but Rutherford himself still speaks of them with joy and reverence. In 1929, when he was four years old, his father was hired to run the Forks Creek Hatchery in Nallpee.

“We lived there for 12 years, which were some of the best years of my life, [as there] was always something to do and… always somebody there to see,” writes Rutherford.

“They got thousands of fish in those years and they gave fish to everyone during the Depression; people came and worked on the fish traps in the high waters to get fish and to have something to do, [as] there was not very much work during the bad years.”

Experiencing this intersection of natural bounty, man-made hardship and human solidarity would prove formative to Rutherford’s worldview, especially as it pertained to natural resources. At a time when what the land had to offer seemed inexhaustible — and when people often acted like it, too — seeing firsthand the consequences of short-sightedness impressed on Rutherford the importance of patience and thrift.

Persevering through lean times, when the woods provided both sustenance and diversion, taught him how to appreciate the land for more than its dollar value.

“I know that [Dale’s] seen when it was logged in the early 1900s and not replanted,” says Rob Friese of Lebam, another longtime family friend. “And that’s just not something a bright person would do.”

Replanting

Indeed, one of Rutherford’s first jobs in the woods, even before he began logging in 1948, was planting trees. He did so first for the state of Washington, and later on for independent outfits, at a time when the practice was still novel.

“He was really in the infancy of tree-planting,” says Victor Niemcziek of Frances.

Unsurprisingly, none of this is particularly noteworthy to Rutherford, who still speaks of planting and pruning trees as one might of brushing their teeth or getting dressed.

“I planted all over around the county here — it’s just one of those things I do normally,” he says. “Just like you’d do certain things every day and don’t think much about it.”

It’s hard to get Rutherford to say much more than this — to really get at what makes him tick. But when pressed, he does offer, with finality: “I enjoy seeing the trees there. Everything isn’t about money. You can do a lot of things and not get any big return out of it — just enjoyment for yourself.”

Older than the trees

On a tour of his forestland, Rutherford pauses for the Observer’s cameras beneath a stately, second-growth Douglas fir. These days, there is a slight hitch in his step. But it is still the unmistakable, loping stride of a seasoned woodsman — brisk and relentless.

That’s when it occurs to this reporter to ask, “Dale, do you think you’re older than some of these trees?”

To which he replies, “Oh yeah, I probably am.”

For now, he probably is. But they will outlive him yet.