Wood

The nurse in the ER said, “oh yes, we see these all the time” as she injected me with whatever drug it is that makes pain go away. As she proceeded to wash out the minute debris from the one inch nick in my kneecap, I realized my own personal little trauma was something many a careless woodsman experiences. In fact, anyone that has truly earned the title of “Woodsman” would never make the mistake of stepping on a slippery log while the bar of the chainsaw (that’s the business end) was anywhere near their legs, especially when the chain is spinning. That was over ten years ago, and I still carry the scar. I’m always mindful of it, even though I wear double layered Carhart’s and am much more present when working in the woods. But I'm a long way from the Woodsman title, and hope I never lose a healthy respect for the latent dangers of cutting wood.

The guy that replaced our roof used to be a logger. He gave me tips that will probably save my life one day. Scary, gory stories that are exactly the kind of education a novice woodchuck needs to hear before they march off into the forest and get themselves killed. An 80 ft tree, a deciduous 80 ft tree is an amazing structure that unlike pine or fir, which are mostly straight trunks, bends and turns and branches as it grows toward the sun. The art of felling a large tree in the direction you want is an exercise in physics that comes from a mixture of experience and common sense. Speaking of… you need to look up every now and again. “Widowmakers” are what they call broken branches hung up higher in a tree waiting to come loose either by wind or the shaking of a tree as it’s being cut. You don’t just walk up to a tree and start sawing or you could end up skewered.

I cut mostly alder as it grows like weeds around the foothills of the Cascades, and burns pretty clean as firewood goes. I try to take trees that are dying or partially blown over by the wind because they too are living things, many older than myself. So when the deed is done and the tree is down, I take a moment and thank the tree for giving its energy to heat my house and barn. I put my hands on the trunk and look closely at the scars and knots that tell a story of it’s aging. I get reflective and feel like I’m looking into a mirror.

I really enjoy this work, and believe somewhere in my genetic code there is woodchuck. It’s almost time to start the process again: felling, limbing, cutting, bucking, hauling, splitting, stacking. Firewood needs time to dry, and I bring in three cords of wood so I better get this on the calendar. It’s hard work, and the workout I get is so much more enjoyable than sweating in some athletic club. A cord of wood for you factoids is 128 cubic feet or 4’w x 4’h x 8’ long, which conveniently is exactly the inner dimension of the funky trailer I bought from a departing college student for $30 bucks.

Who knows how long I can keep this up. I'm in better shape than many men my age, but some form of decrepitude is inevitable, and I have mentioned that condo in the city once or twice. But there's an interum step that I think has real potential. You've heard of these retreats offered to corporate manager types where they remove themselves from the verticals and horizontals of office space and head for the woods to "shift their paradigms". What better way too think outside the box and achieve zen mind than stacking wood, or the focus one can gain by splitting a piece of wood right down the middle over and over again. This my friends is a goldmine in the making, as the opportunities to exchange money for sweat are endless. Thank you Tom Sawyer.