Luis Vidart (Orchard) is a master storyteller. His tales are of true-life experiences: plowing fields with oxen on the family farm in Basque Country, herding sheep in remote parts of California and Wyoming, hunting elk, and felling trees in Oregon’s Coastal Range.
Bio
Luis Vidart spellbinds his listeners with tales of his working life as a shepherd and logger. Vidart’s rock solid frame speaks to his years of hard labor. As a teenager in his native Basque Country, Spain, he plowed fields with oxen, milked upwards of a 120 head of sheep, and lambed just as many, or more, in a season. Of his later years herding sheep in remote California and Wyoming, he says, "You got $500 wagon, you got million-dollar view—360 degrees all way around.” In 1976, when Vidart arrived in Oregon, he got work as a tree-feller with a local logging firm. For 30 years, he engaged in one of the most dangerous, high-risk, occupations around. Logging runs in Luis's family, “My daddy [also] worked in the woods…I started with my dad cutting trees with the crosscut saw.” Louis Vidart honed his storytelling skills as his worked long hours, often with just a single companion. You want a tale? Stop by Lou’s Saw Shop in Cove Orchard, and ask Vidart about smuggling horses over in the dead of night, over rugged mountain passes on the border into France as well as his adventures protecting his sheep from eagles overhead and bobcats lurking over the rise and lusting for brain or fresh blood. He’ll also recount those moments of utter terror a tree-feller faces when it’s impossible to predict which way the tree will fall. Vidart shares first-hand experiences, lived by a man who has taken life by the horns.
