The Guitar: Tracing the Grain Back to the Tree by Chris Gibson & Andrew Warren

Author:Chris Gibson & Andrew Warren [Gibson, Chris & Warren, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: MUS000000 Music / General, nature, Trees, Environmental Science, SCI026000 Science / Environmental Science (see Also Chemistry / Environmental), Guitar, Musical Instruments, General, NAT034000 Nature / Plants / Trees, Plants, MUS023060 Music / Musical Instruments / Guitar, science, music
ISBN: 9780226763828
Google: QCn5zQEACAAJ
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2021-05-05T00:27:13.284552+00:00

5

Sitka

It’s springtime in Vancouver. Snow-capped mountains rise behind the harbor. Glassy skyscrapers overlook craft breweries and cafes. Once a logging and fishing town, this is an elite city, a global destination for cruise ships, lifestyle migrants, and real estate speculators. Yet, Vancouver came into being in much tougher times. Built upon First Nations land inhabited by Musqueam, Squamish, Tsawwassen, Tsleil-Waututh, and Katzie tribes, it was a maritime outpost carved from conflict in a rugged region of seemingly impenetrable mountain ranges, endless Pacific storms, and giant trees. One such tree—Picea sitchensis, known as Sitka spruce—has become the most important and ubiquitous species in the world for steel-string acoustic guitar making.

Growing alongside Sitka in the lush, cool mountain forests surrounding Vancouver are Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), western red cedar (Thuja plicata), and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla). This quartet of plants enabled the growth of the Northwest Coast’s enormous forestry industry. Logging, lumber, and pulp drove Vancouver’s emergence as an industrial and transportation hub in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this key axis of Pacific mercantile trade, freighters from Canton and Honolulu would unload teas, silks, porcelains, and sandalwood, and load logs for the return journey. Century-old photos in the Vancouver Public Library archives depict the busy industrial port of False Creek, adjacent to downtown. In the background, sawmills belch smoke and sawdust; in the foreground, almost every inch of navigable waterway is awash with lumber. Although False Creek’s timber mills and warehouses are long gone, remnants of Vancouver’s lumbering history are everywhere: Kitsilano Beach’s rotund, weather-beaten logs; the stumps of enormous trees logged in the late 1800s now decaying anonymously in downtown Stanley Park; millions of western red cedar shingles cloaking the city’s historic houses. In Arbutus Ridge, one of Vancouver’s historic wealthy enclaves, major street names—Hemlock, Cedar, Fir, Spruce—are dedicated to the trees of which empires (and mansions) were built. In this city of trees we began our search for the historical and present traces of Sitka.

* * *

Five miles south of downtown lies the Fraser River, Vancouver Harbor’s forgotten cousin. After an 850-mile journey rising and raging through the Rockies and British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, the Fraser River snakes along muddy flatlands, low and wide. A sprawling tangle of industrial buildings and roads farewells the river before it bends past Vancouver airport to the Salish Sea.

We arrive at the designated spot on the river’s North Arm. We’re keen to witness floating log yards and learn about hauling timber by tugboat and barge—a mysterious stage of the guitar-making journey. How exactly do the giant spruce logs made into guitars find their way into sawmills and factories?

An unassuming nautical blue shed squats behind a quaint but proud sign: “Hodder Tug Since 1901.” We’re here to meet a Pacific Rim Tonewoods (PRT) crew, including founder Steve McMinn; general manager Eric Warner; and wood-procurement manager Kevin Burke. Albert Germick, timber-sourcing specialist for C. F. Martin & Co, is also present. Together they have just crossed the border from PRT’s base in

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