I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK

Mylz and Doug arrived first, pulling a trailer complete with ladders, saws, work gloves and the other accoutrements of the trade. Cos and Laura weren’t far behind with three chainsaws between them and we were barely finished with our coffee when Paca rolled up with her own, very feminine looking purple and green one. Shortly after, Steve-O bounced his truck into the drive and unleashed yet another chainsaw. The sun was barely poking its way through the trees, but the neighbors were all up and out so it was time to go to work.

Living in the mountains during a multi-year drought comes with certain responsibilities, one of which is undertaking the act of fire-mitigation. This entails ensuring that the trees on your property are thinned to the point where a wild fire is unable to ‘crown’, or flit from one tree top to another. The trunks need to be clear of all branches to a height of 10 feet with dead wood and ground fall removed altogether. Also, any tree within 30 feet of the house must be felled. It was said that in the event of a fire passing through the neighborhood, the fire department will simply ignore any non-mitigated property and concentrate on the ones they have a chance of saving.

It’s a serious business, but despite living here for four years; we haven’t done it yet.

In my defense, let’s not forget that I have spent a ridiculous number of weekends working, particularly that first year. And that I don’t own a chainsaw. And that when we first moved here, we didn’t know many people so had no resources to call upon for help. And that the last two years have been damp, which has lessened the urgency. This winter however, has been bone dry with relentless high winds. And by all accounts, it’s going to be a long, hot summer. So, there’s no escaping it; a lot of our beloved pine trees are going to have to go.

Mylz announced upfront that she was going nowhere near the chainsaws so she and Dear Wife were elected slash-draggers. They busied themselves collecting the trimmed branches and stacking them near the road ready for the county to come with the chipper. Meanwhile, while the rest of us got noisy with the chainsaws. Sad to say, I have a little experience with these fabulous inventions but Doug is something of an expert so he gave me a lesson on the finer points.

"Always know where the chainsaw is; make sure you have an escape route, let the saw do the work." There was more, but that was the gist of it and soon I was slicing my way through pine trees like the lumberjack I was always destined to be. It wasn’t too long before I realized that chainsaws are bloody heavy and while it might be easier than hand sawing, this was still physically hard work. I pushed on, feeling manlier by the minute but nervously wondering how long I was going to be able to keep it up. Fortunately, the wood chippings finally turned to sawdust, indicating the chain was in need of sharpening and while Doug sat down to take care of that, I ambled off to supervise Raven who had arrived fashionably late.

With the aid of a smaller chainsaw she was making short work of several spindlier trees. I’m always happy to watch someone else work but when her biceps started to tremble I took over and by tag-teaming in this manner, we cleared ground at a record pace. Sadly it wasn’t to last as with a cough and a splutter the chainsaw stuttered to a halt, never to start again despite Cos’ tender ministrations. So, handsaws it was then and like a couple of hairy backwoodsmen we grabbed an end each and began the process manually.

You’ve probably seen photos of those enormous trees being carved up by two guys, one above and one below, hauling on opposite ends of the same saw? Apparently this is called a misery-whip, presumably because it must have been pretty depressing for the poor sod at the bottom. ("Misery-Whip" - See the stuff you learn from me?) Ours was more of a side to side action but something else we learned was that the width of a tree was no indication of its cut-ability. From checking the rings on the trunk, we theorized that trees which grew in the lean years were much denser than those which had sprouted during damper times and many of the spindly looking trunks were astonishingly resistant to the ministrations of the saw. Breath grew ragged, sweat dripped and if we hadn’t begun singing Monty Python’s lumberjack song, I doubt we could have kept it up.

Our fellow foresters were spread around the yard and every few minutes the air was rent with cracking and creaking as another tree toppled to the ground and like ants, the workers scurried around trimming off the limbs and branches before slicing the trunk into firewood sized segments. Blue sky began to appear above where none had been before and our acre lot began to take on a park like appearance with large open spaces and airy vistas. And still we were barely getting started. The pizza lunch came and went with the number of remaining trees scarcely seeming to diminish despite the wood piles growing ever higher.

None of us could keep up this pace and I’m sure I’m not the only one who was secretly relieved when one after another, the chainsaws began to give out. They say five hours of continuous use is about the limit for most saws and ours had performed longer service than that today. Dirty air filters, auto-lubrication problems, sheer-cussedness, whatever the reason, one by one they coughed to a halt and refused to restart. We hauled on the pull-starts, we tweaked the chokes, we used bad language but nothing would induce them to fire up again. So, like any conscientious lumberjacks would do, we dragged out the beer cooler, put up our feet and made ourselves comfortable for the rest of the afternoon.

Looking around, I’d estimate there are at least another 30 trees to come down and some of them are pretty hefty looking beasts. I already have a commitment for next Saturday but the coming weeks are all fully booked so Sunday it will have to be. But you know what’s really cool?

Everybody says they’re coming back to help.

Footnote:
For a completely different version of the same day, check out Fiddlebird's blog.