CARLOW COTJIPANY

Ftleet

Wqlker Tilley: the h Tree Former

by Alvin Klotz, American l'orest Products Industries, Inc.

Walker Tilley of Ukiah, Calif., is a man handy with words, woods and walking.

Take, for example, the time he picked up a foreign girl journalist-writer along the Redwood highway. She was motor-biking through Northern California during a tour of the United States and Canada, preparatory to writing a book.

She had turned her head not a fraction of an inch in recognition as he passed, but she later confessed to him that she had begun to dub him the "phantom of the highway" after noticing how often his truck passed her motorbike.

Walker Tilley finally worked up nerve and approach tactics.

"She trad Quebec plates. I naturally thought she was French. So at the last moment I quickly exchanged my California sombrero for a beret and flaggeil her do#n: -

"'Pardon this unusual approach, ma'am, but I judge you are an unusual woman who has, like me, traveled about the world. One meets so few interestinE peoDle in life's travels. I am not trying to be fresh. To pr6ve ii I ask you simply to follow me to my home, where my wife will be happy to entertain you at lunch."

Nonpluised, the Englishwoman, as she turned out to be, thought awhile and finally said, "I'11 do it."

The woman subsequently spent days discovering the Red- wood region and learning about sustained-yield forestry and logging techniques on industrial Tree Farms.

"IJnusual" is the name for Walker Tilley, the Rotarian president of the Ukiah club.

Marcus Aurelius is credited with saying, "That which comes after conforms to that which has gone before." Tree farmers, men who view their lands with long-range crops of timber in mind, are the most futureJooking of men, but perhaps ancestry, too, plays a part in making a free farmer.

*Certainly Walker Tilley sprouted from a forestry-minded family tree.

His forebears settled Arcata in the redwood region in 1850. Lumbering played a big part in their livelihood. His father was born in Ar.cata, his mother in Eureka. He also married into a lumber family. Mrs. Dorothy Flinn Tilley's grandfather was secretary-manager of the Chicago Lumbermen's Club for many years. IIer maternal grandfather operated lumber carriers-on the Great Lakes. TIer father wis manager of Albion Lumber Co. in the 1920s and was an early promoter of sustained yield of forest lands along with C. Russell Johnson of Union Lumber Co., who built the town of Fort Bragg.

Walker Tilley's penchant for the foreSt instead of the mill -a bent for the lonelv life-mav have come from a subconscious association with his ndme, and at an early age: "'Walker" Tillev.

He does not iemember any psycholosical connection with his name, but he early ran ouf o? walki"ng companions.

"I used to average 45 miles a day for four to five days at a -t!m_e, in every direction from Arcata except west," he said. "I like to take friends along, but they would last only one trip."

Having run out of walking friends, he'd go his lonely way. He learned to travel lightly . salt, toothbrush, side pistbl for squirrels and rabbits, and fish tackle. Meals were bften taken at the home of Indian friends of his family.

Walker Tilley was very close to the founding of the Aperican Tree Farm System-a forest industry -program dtially designed to educate the American publii regaidine the practical profit in growing timber ds a crop anil to as-sure a perpetual supply of raw material. -

First of all, Tilley is a veteran industrial forester. After attending the School of Forestry at Oregon State College in 1913, he worked for the Albion Lumber,Co. in Northein