His family figures the hat was pounded deep into the ground by the rolling skidder tractor somewhere along the mountainside.
Jeff Erickson, then a 25-year-old father and husband, was logging up Bear Creek near Lolo the Tuesday after Memorial Day in 2000. No one witnessed the accident. And Jeff, who suffered a traumatic brain injury, recalls little up until six months before.
Enveloped in a cloud of mist, he moves to the 20th truck in a line of 21. He quickly shoots the last two rigs clean before confidently striding across the Bitterroot Motors lot to attack a row of dusty Expeditions.
The day he'll never remember is a day his wife, Marcia, will never forget. His daughter, Kelli, then 5, remembers being picked up from day care by a family friend instead of by her mom that evening.
Although sawyers were downing trees just around the ridge up Bear Creek that Tuesday, they heard nothing over the drowning buzz of chain saws as Jeff's 19,000-pound tractor tumbled 300 yards down the mountain.
No one will ever know exactly what happened, but Marcia thinks the tractor's tire slipped on another log, causing it to roll. Along the way, the skidder tore out a full-grown tree and severed the top of another tree 30 feet up.
“So he was catching 30 feet of air,” Marcia said. “There were big, huge craters in the ground from where the skidder landed and tore the ground up.”
The Ericksons' lives seem to center on mountainside events. The two spent their first date at Discovery Mountain.
“She knew I couldn't turn down skiing,” Jeff said.
The couple met in 1992 at Hellgate High School.
“I kept stealing gum out of his locker. I finally asked him out on a date,” Marcia said.
Jeff admits to being a daredevil. Photos show him flying mid-air in a perfect skier's crouch while jumping from a 30-foot crevice, competing in a pole-climbing logger event, topping a tree over 100 feet up, and lying almost horizontal as he circles a lake on a wave runner.
He started helping Marcia's family log their 60 acres in Ashby Creek the summer before his senior year in 1993. They married the following year and went into partnership with Marcia's parents in 1996, forming A&E Logging and subcontracting for Plum Creek Timber Co.
By 1999, the couple was ready to start their own logging company and planned to do so at the completion of the Bear Creek job.
“We were about three to four days to completing the job,” Marcia said.
But on the morning of May 30, 2000, Marcia's dad found Jeff slouched unconscious in the skidder cab shortly after 10 a.m. Three of the tractor's tires were popped. Jeff's head was smashed against the tractor's crunched cage. He was still buckled in, his legs splayed out to the side.
“The scarring on his head was like the diamond shape of the cage,” Marcia said. He suffered no broken bones. “Dad had to stand on top of the log deck to get a cell phone signal,” she said. “He called me at work.”
Marcia, a teller at Community Bank of Missoula, hurried to balance her drawer, found someone to cover her shift, and arranged for a friend to take care of Kelli. Then a paramedic called and told her they had put Jeff in a drug-induced coma.
A friend met Marcia at the bank and drove her to St. Patrick Hospital.
“While we were driving, I could hear the Life Flight helicopter coming in,” she said.
Jeff remained in a coma for three weeks. On June 26, he was moved to Community Medical Center's Rehabilitation Center and remained there until July 28.
In rehab, Jeff figured a way to escape from the hospital bed without making the alarm underneath him sound.
“My brain was working somewhere,” he said with a grin.
He could escape, but he didn't have the balance needed to walk. Eventually, his bed was covered with a tent to keep him in - a veil bed.
Kelli's first memory of seeing her dad is in the veil bed. However, family photos show the little redhead visiting her dad when he was still comatose.
In rehab, Jeff's memory was hit-and-miss. He recognized Marcia and Kelli. He couldn't recall the phone number he had used every day for the past few years, but he remembered his childhood number. He couldn't remember if he showered that morning, but when Marcia and Kelli brought in their miniature pinscher of 6 months, he shouted “Scooby-Doo” just as always.
Kelli remembers spinning circles in Jeff's empty wheelchair during visits. And he talked goofy, she said. “He couldn't put words into place.”
Jeff called the windowsill the wall and a good friend “the pizza delivery man.”
By August, Jeff was back home. Recovery was slow.
“He was on the couch a lot,” Kelli said. Jeff started rock climbing to get his strength back, and Kelli joined him.
When the staff at the Missoula Rock Garden saw Kelli's natural talent, they asked her to join the climbing team, Marcia said. She could climb adult routes by “smearing” her feet along the wall until she could find a hold for her foot. Kelli had a chance to compete at regionals, but, only 7 years old, she was too shy.
Neither dad nor daughter climb much these days, but you are likely to find Jeff or Kelli harnessed and strapped to a bungee cord flying 20 feet high on “The Trampoline Thing.”
The Ericksons started Big Sky Fun in 2003. They take their bungee-cord trampoline to parties, corporate events, reunions and fairs around the Northwest. Kelli's main job is to strap people into a harness. But once people find out she can do triple flips on the trampoline, she is often on-site entertainment as well.
Kelli likes working alongside her dad, but her patience wears thin when kids misbehave while waiting in line.
The Ericksons also run Credible Pressure Washing, a pressure-wash business, washing car-lot vehicles in Missoula and Hamilton. Kelli doesn't help her dad wash vehicles, but she plans to dog-sit and mow the lawn for neighbors this summer, she said.
No doubt, their lives are different since Jeff's accident.
“We used to do a lot of fun things together. Now it's like we only work,” Marcia said.
Post-injury, Jeff is more cautious and strict and is less willing to go camping, four-wheeling or snowmobiling with Marcia and Kelli.
“Before his accident, he didn't care about getting hurt. Now he knows what you go through for recuperation. And he doesn't want us to get hurt,” Marcia said.
Fifty percent of marriages fail within 24 months after a serious injury, according to Traumaticbraininjury.net. Marcia admits to staying with Jeff partly for Kelli's sake, saying, “She needs her father.” Jeff still struggles with controlling his anger and relating with others, including his teenage daughter.
“After he came out of the coma, he kept saying to Kelli, ‘Come untie me.' ” Marcia said. “We had to tell Kelli, ‘Don't listen to daddy.' Now it's still in her mind - don't listen to daddy,” Marcia said with a half-hearted laugh.
Life is getting better, Jeff says.
Kelli remembers before the accident when Jeff would get up early for logging and wake her up at 2 or 3 in the morning to watch cartoons.
Now they have graduated to playing Wii carnival games - skeet ball, horse racing, spill the milk - late into the night.
And they, Jeff anyway, will occasionally sit down to watch a television episode of the logging show “Ax Men.”
“The producers didn't do a very good job, though,” Jeff said. “They should come here and film some real logging.”
Karen Plant is a copy desk intern for the Missoulian.
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