Don't Axe Me, Man

I have a wood-burning fireplace in my living room that becomes play fireplace for our grandkids to roast marshmallows when they stay over in the winter. When it's got a bunch of logs burning in it, it will flat run you out of the house. We have several acres of trees on the place and only buy wood to supplement what I cut.

I've been using a chainsaw most of my adult life, and am not without some experience at it. One recent Saturday, Susie and I joined our neighbor and several of her friends in sub-zero weather to cut dead-standing trees. We cut a couple of cords (for you non-woodsman types that's a stack four feet wide, four tall and eight feet long). A cord, while seeming enormous, doesn't last very long if you heat with logs as she does since it's her only source of fuel.

Okay, maybe I've seen too many segments of Ax Men on TV where guys drop monumental trees exactly where they want them to hit, and they do it with amazing ease, but I've been watching this sixteen-inch-diameter-dead tree standing beside my shop/shed since we moved out to the woods. Over the three years, it has shed rotten limbs like a drunk carrying a four foot tall stack of boxes of chocolates up a flight of stairs in the dark--each barely missing the shed's tin roof. I haven't cut it down because its lean meant I'd have to tie it off near the top and use increasing winch tension-(I have one of those on my four-wheeler that was in the shop with a blown motor) to make it fall in a direction it was not inclined by design, physics, and the non-flexible principles of weight distribution and balance to take. When the most major limb fell a few weeks ago and left it looking like a pole, I decided that, although it was leaning toward a collision with my shed roof, that like the Ax Men, I could cut it so it would have no choice but to buck nature and fall where I wanted it to.

Taking out my Echo ES 440, with a newly sharpened chain, I studied the fifty odd feet of tree for several long minutes. It was cold, but there was no wind to help or hurt my enterprise. I cranked the saw and, after revving hell out of it for Ax-Man effect, carefully cut a perfect and deep mouth-shaped slice out of the debarked trunk. She (we farmers call any inanimate object of substance "she") was not as rotten through the base as I'd imagined, which was good as it would make nice firewood. From slightly above the center of the wedge I started the blade on a downward angle in her backside as to hit the apex of the missing wedgeTo make sure I was being an Ax Man I cut in about ten inches and inserted a wedge behind the blade to induce her to fall forward. I used a small two-pound sledgehammer to drive the shim deeper to nudge the tree so it would fall where the nose would be pointing if there had been a tree nose above the open mouth.

All went as planned until the cut was almost through to the apex. Unlike the show, my tree defied everything I believed and pinched my saw. The tree headed backward, bound for my shed ...and time stood still.

It hit the tin roof under which I normally park my four-wheeler when the engine isn't blown, my motorized wheelbarrow, and the zero-turn radius mower, which I had moved, just in case. The old gal, despite my efforts at pushing, fell back toward the corner of the open structure and she landed on the roof as though she'd been punched out by a giant. I noticed that my chainsaw was missing its handle, which is never a good thing, so I couldn't even cut up the tree to get it down in sections. For several minutes I felt almost as let down as I do when I receive a rejection notice from an editor.

I have a shirt that says, "Professional Author. Don't try this at home." I should have one printed that says, "Amateur Ax Man...."

Taught me a valuable lesson. Just because someone else can do it doesn't mean I can. Writing isn't cutting trees, thank God. I don't know anybody who's ever harmed more than the English language doing it. Oh well, like writing, you'll never know unless you try.