Father took me, the chainsaw and an axe to a stand of cedars in the woods. He pointed out two trees. “These will do. They’re tall and straight and easy to fell. You know a chainsaw is dangerous, but when you’re felling a tree, it’s dangerous too. Trees look like they’re just standing there, but they have a lot of tension in them. They push back on the weather … the wind, the rain the snow … they’re strong. They can surprise you.” I knew this. Mother fretted if father was not in from the woods by dusk.
Father glanced around the forest floor near the trees. “When you’re working in the woods you’ve got to look ahead. If you don’t, you work against yourself. The first thing to think about is, how are you going to get them out of here and down to the lake?”
I thought for a moment. “Well, if they’re cut into short logs, when Reg and Ron come, we could drag them out to the field. We could use the wagon to take them to the lake.”
“I don’t think your cousins would do much heavy liftin’. They’re town boys, soft, it’s hard enough to get them to pick berries. They could help you build it if you had the logs at the shore. There’s an easier way to move them. You can use Tony. He can twitch the logs the whole way to the lake. We can’t get in here with a wagon without cutting a wood -road, but if you lead him by his bridle, he can get in here just like we did. That’s why they call a trail like this one a bridle path.”
“Why do they say ‘twitch’, why not drag?”
“You’ll know why when you watch Tony. It’s the log that twitches. Tony was trained as a yard horse. When you put the chain around the log and hitch it to his harness, he’ll know what to do.”
“What’s a yard horse?”
“Back before we used heavy equipment like tractors in the lumber woods, horses did the work. They would twitch the logs to an open space called a yard. Take a good yard horse by the bridle and lead him to the yard a couple of times, he’ll do it the next trip without you. He’ll twitch the next log, right up beside the others and stop so that they are even ended. That way they’re easy to roll onto a pile or up onto a bobsled if its in winter. When he’s unhooked, he’ll go back for more.”
“But enough about that”, father continued. “Now, I’ll show you how to bring these down. First, decide where they should fall.”
I looked around and gestured to the largest opening near the trees.
“Well. that makes sense and it’s what most would do; but think ahead. Tony will be twitching this one the same way we came in. If we fell it into that opening it’s sideways to the trail. It should be felled so that its trunk is pointing at the trail. Makes it easier.”
“But if we fell it that way it will fall into that tree behind it.”
“Good eye. We don’t want to get it lodged in another tree. That makes a lot of work. Dangerous work. So, we’ll fell it just a bit off center so that it falls between that one and the tree beside it. It’ll swipe their branches on the way down, but it won’t lodge. To do that we’ll cut a notch here.” He gestured at a point about knee high on the side of the trunk facing the way he wanted it to fall. “Most people these days cut the notch with a chainsaw. In the past, lumberjacks were good axemen. They would notch the tree like this.” He picked up the axe, tapped the axe on the spot he had pointed out, then swung it making a cut in the trunk parallel to the ground. Without pausing he made a second swing downward at an angle just above the first cut and a wedge of wood flew out of the trunk and landed a short distance away. “They used to say, ‘It’ll fall where the chip lies.’ Stand back here and see how the trunk lines up with that chip that flew out. This tree will fall right along that line.”
Tree trunk Tree about to fall >
Direction of fall >
Axe notch Back-cut saw kerf
Hinge
…………. Chip …..>
“Now we’ll back-cut from the other side of the trunk toward the notch.” Father started the chainsaw and began the cut. After a few seconds he stopped the saw and set it down. “See this cut I’ve started? That’s called the kerf. That’s what you call the cut a saw makes. A saw’s teeth make a kerf just a tiny bit wider than its blade … that’s what the sawdust is from. Now notice this kerf is a bit higher on the trunk than the bottom of the notch on the opposite side. As I cut through, the tree will lean forward toward the notch and the kerf will open a bit. If I had cut the kerf lower than the bottom of the notch the tree would have leaned back and squeezed the kerf. That would jam the saw blade and you would be in a real mess. It could ruin the saw. Men have been killed trying to save a saw … careless.”
Father started the saw again and continued to cut. I thought the tree was starting to lean a bit because the kerf slightly widened as the chainsaw cut deeper. Before the kerf reached all the way to the notch father stopped the saw again, slid it from the kerf and sat it down. He put his hand on the trunk at shoulder height and pushed against the tree. It leaned slowly at first and then suddenly swooshed down to the ground with a loud cracking noise. It fell exactly as he had planned.
Father pointed to the butt end of the felled tree and ran his finger across a thin slightly raised strip of splintered wood that separated the kerf and the notch. “It seems sensible to back-cut the whole way to the notch, but you don’t do that. That little strip I left between the kerf of the saw and the notch of the axe acts like a hinge as the tree falls. Imagine you opened a door without hinges. It would fall on top of you. The hinge keeps a door from just flying off when its opened. This hinge kept the tree on the stump. Kept it from doing something unexpected. The cracking noise was that hinge folding and splintering as the tree fell.”
He felled the other tree and then cut them into eight-foot logs. “That way they’ll be ready when you come out with Tony.”
“I’ll come back out this afternoon.”
“Well, the beans and peas are well up, I’ve got to hoe and weed them before the weather turns. Do you think you can harness him?”
“Yeah.”
“He’ll be all right with you, but are you ok with him?”
“For sure”, I said with false confidence. “I feed him and clean his stable all the time. He whinnies every time I give him oats.”
“He knows you but move slowly around him. Once his bridle and collar are on, he’ll know the harness is coming. He likes that. He knows he’s getting out of the stable with some company. Hitch the whiffletree to his harness with the long traces. He’ll drag the chain on the way out here, but you’ll need to pick it up to lift the whiffletree clear of snags.”
So that afternoon I harnessed Tony on my own for the first time. We twitched the logs one by one to the lake. I took his nose bag and a small packet of oats in my backpack and treated him after each round trip to the lake. After the first trip he knew where to go and so I just walked along holding the slack reins. That day I was more aware of the trees that lined the field. Many old stalwarts just stood there, but as we passed the grove of white pines they whispered with each breeze and further along a poplar’s leaves trembled, it seemed, for no reason at all.