Mat Evans is a man who likes to be clean.  His clothes are kept fresh and well-fitting, his hair is neatly trimmed and styled, his truck is washed once a week.  And every day he is out with his crew traipsing through dirt and working with explosives.  By the time they are done, everything he is wearing will be caked in mud.

            Evans, 32 years old and known by all as ‘Matty,’ is one of the lead blasters for BJ Equipment Co., a rock drilling and blasting contractor based in Eugene, Ore.  His job has him waking hours before dawn and driving across the northwest to blast rock.  On this particular day he and his three-man crew are at the Davis Creek rock quarry in Silverton, Ore.  The rock produced by their labor is then sold for millions to be used for road construction and building foundations.  Between spending long hours outside in the northwestern rains and working with heavy equipment and explosives, Evans’ attempts at cleanliness are lost when working in the rock pits.

            “Other guys just don’t mind getting dirty” says Evans, wiping dirt off his company sweatshirt as his trudges through the mud he has been working in since dawn. 

            The rock pits are far from a sparkling and picturesque place to work.  The seemingly naturalistic view is made imperfect by the 80ft drop-off just feet from where the men are working, leading down to a rock pit large enough to comfortably house two college football stadiums; after the blasters detonate their shot, over a third of the pit will be filled with freshly blown up rock and gravel.  The Terex drill forces metal against rock as it bores out the last of the 56 holes, which Evans and his crew will soon load with explosives.  The two functioning air compressors fill the air with rapid-but-opposing rhythmic pulsations as they pump out any accumulated water from each of the 70 foot deep, four inch wide holes.  The Takeuchi forklift, referred to as the “keuch,” admits plumes of diesel as it transports a second 2000 pound crate of the ammonium nitrate explosive powder used to blow up the rock.  The four men, all wearing Carhart khakis and fleece sweatshirts to fight off the biting breeze, stand just a few feet apart from one another yet shout just to be heard over the noise of the machines.

“When we shut everything off, it’s so peaceful,” says Ryan Bickett, a fellow blaster for BJ Equipment who regularly works under Evans.

            As the Blaster in Charge, Evans oversees and delegates jobs to the crew as they prepare their shot site.  Despite his soft spoken nature and boyish looks, the men hang on his every word and follow instructions without question.  Today his crew has only three other people instead of the scheduled five: Bickett, Kellen Thomson and Evans’ brother, Bret Evans.  His crew fills each of the holes, which are drilled in a grid pattern with six feet between each hole, with more than 450 pounds of the ammonium nitrate powder.  The men are all lean and toned from their long hours of manual labor and heavy lifting; Evans, in contrast, has a build and demeanor more like that of a muscular teddy bear than a hard laborer, his solid structure apparent even beneath his layers of clothing.  Once the holes have been filled, Evans connects them all with ‘blasting cable,’ a thin, yellow, gunpowder-filled tube that burns at a rate of one mile per second and carries an explosion to each hole.  The specific layout of the blasting cable allows Evans to time and coordinate the detonation to ensure maximum safety and efficiency. Once everything is finalized and the site has been cleared of people and equipment, the blasters get their “reward” for their day’s work; an explosion large enough to send seismic waves into nearby towns and turn solid ground into thousands of pounds of loose rock.

            “You know that you come here and have a job to do, and when you’re done you get to go home,” says Evans.  “You’re not stuck watching the clock all day.”

            After working for BJ Equipment for three years, Evans laughs at the idea of going back to working at a desk. While studying marine biology at Lane Community College, Evans worked for a local surveyor, entering data onto a computer for up to for eight “long and boring” hours.  After dropping out of college Evans refused to work at another desk.  “I can’t stand sitting in one place for too long” says Evans. He instead worked odd jobs for several years, including repairing fire sprinklers, before joining BJ Equipment.

            Evans’ job as a blaster is anything but the typical nine-to-five career; the blasters lead a glamorous lifestyle all their own.  The crew does not find out whether or not they are working until the night before, sometimes not knowing until after 9 p.m. They show up at the shop between 4 and 6 a.m. and spend hours driving to the day’s rock quarry.  The drive enables most of the men to catch a few extra hours of sleep before arriving at the shot site, where they will work anywhere between a few hours and a full week. Their morning and afternoon meals are purchased from local mini marts and consist primarily of corn dogs, chicken strips, and energy drinks.  “No one ever brings their own lunch,” says Evans.  “I always wish I did just so I’d have a little better food.”  Unlike his crew, who are all in their mid 20’s, the hard labor has failed to fully compensate for Evans’ mini mart diet, with the extra corn dogs just beginning to show around his abdomen. Occasionally the crew will break the cycle and stop at a nearby Subway, “but you get sick of that after a while.  There are only so many combinations of sandwiches.”

            Once at the shot, the crew is simply “a bunch of boys playing in the mud”.  “[There’s] a lot of joking around a giving each other a hard time,” says Evans.  “We’re all friends though – that’s how a lot of guys get hired, is through their friends.” Most of the men have known each other since high school.  Evans himself got the job from a friend of the family he had known since childhood.  The level of camaraderie is necessary, given that the crew will spend up to a full week on the road sharing dingy and cramped motel rooms.  “We’re like brothers,” says Bickett.

            All of the blasters agree; “you either love [working as a blaster] or you hate it,” and they all happen to adore their jobs. “The biggest problem” says Evans, “is missing my girlfriend when we’re on the road.”  Evans and his girlfriend live together and have been dating for 8 years, and his days on the road make maintaining the relationship difficult.  But both Evans and his girlfriend have weekends off, allowing them to make up for the days apart, and his enjoyment of his job makes the sacrifice a simple choice.

            “Every day is always different,” says Evans.  “You never really know how it’s going to end up.  It’s either going to be good, or something catastrophic could happen.

            Evans admits that, while they have “not [had] a lot of close calls,” they do occasionally happen.  While working in Astoria last summer, chunks of rock became airborne during the explosion and plummeted through the roof of a trailer. Luckily, the owner of the trailer worked for the rock quarry and understood the potential risk of parking near the pit.  “[You] kind of expect [mishaps to occur], you only have so much control [when working with explosives],” says Evans.  “You just use your judgment.”

            As for the owner of the trailer, all he asked for was $700 and a couple bottles of whiskey.  That way he could “patch up the roof and have a good time.”