John Jordan is a freelance writer from Chatham and co-owns a Bed and Breakfast at the family farm.	How Not To Cut A Tree

 

It's not everyday you get to talk about a near death experience but as I look at these cowboy lumberjacks hacking down big ash trees in the name of controlling a little pest, I am reminded of how I saw the white light at the end of the hall. We are talking a long time ago, back when my ego was much bigger than it is now. Took the family to a cottage up north where we stayed with friends. But unlike southwestern Ontario where sitting on the verandah in August can be hot work, cottage country can get downright cold. So the ladies said, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a fire on and warm the cottage?"

My friend and I saw that the wood box was empty but we'd fix that. Why I brought my chainsaw all the way up there, I can't recall but I said, "We'll solve that problem, let's go cut wood!"

So off we went while the girls shivered in the cabin. "Better find some wood that's been dead for a while. Will burn better," we thought. So there we found it, a magnificent old elm that had been dead for years but still standing, naked as a jaybird.

Since my friend didn't know where you put the mixed fuel or chain oil into a saw, I told him to stand back and let me take this leviathan of the woods down.

I told you about my ego, didn't I? Well, I thought I was on top of the world with this little gadget that was just big enough to circumcise the trunk. One pull and it came to life, I looked up at the craggy old beast and figured it made sense to send it this direction so I made a wedge cut on that side. The freshly sharpened saw cut it like butter. Next to make my horizontal cut. "Shouldn't take much to drop this behemoth," I thought. I thought wrong.

I better tell you that going on a holiday up north did not include bringing any safety apparel. Not that I had any but a pair of leather gloves and my safety work boots would have been a start. Safety helmet, goggles, ear plugs, chaps? Not in my inventory. Here I was, cutting down a dead elm tree in my shorts and T shirt and sandals. As I look back on it now, I keep saying, "What was I using for brains?"

But I haven't told you the rest of the story. For starters, I never had felled a dead tree before; nor had I dropped a tree in the woods where many other trees are close by. And why was I thinking we needed this much wood in the first place. What was wrong with gathering some wood that Mother Nature had already felled?

No, I had to show that 1 could take on this tree and the sooner it was down, the sooner we'd have a cheery fire going in the stove.

So I'm cutting away, nearly get over to the wedge cut and sure enough the giant starts its fall, exactly in the direction I wanted it to go. I stopped the saw and started moving away. Where did I go? I thought in a line 180 degrees to the fall would be smart. Meantime my buddy, from a safe distance shouts, "Run!"

Why, I had no idea. But in a moment, from my unconscious state, I thought I should have run faster.

What happened was apparent after I came to. My buddy saw it all before his eyes and I heard some of the evidence as I was hightailing it.

You see, a dead tree has a mind of its own. The tree tops near-by stopped this my prize from falling in the direction I intended it. So the momentum of the fall was transferred to the trunk and sent butt down to the ground on the wedge side with a loud thud. Now these forces were transferred back to the top in exactly the opposite direction much like the velocity of a mule skinner's whip. The next noise I heard was the shattering dead tree top as the old creature decided to shed any rotted pieces down ahead of its new direction of fall, right where I was running.

I tell you, the sky rained of dead wood, falling all around me, so far just grazing me as I am still running in the wrong direction....kerwhump.... and fade to black. Next, silence. Now it is stars, I never knew they could be so vivid. I was out cold on the forest floor and soon I was seeing something I swear was the big white light.

I was hit on the back of my head with a chunk of dead wood as big around as my leg.

Meantime, my buddy was over top of me saying reassuring things like, "You dead? You should be dead. Your head broke that piece of wood in two."

Well, I wasn't dead, I eventually got up but with extreme difficulty. My head kept going in circles and now the pain was setting in.

I tried speaking but I am sure I sounded like a drunken sailor and made no sense at all. My buddy loaded me up in the old Jeep and back to the cottage we went.

The first things the girls said was, "Where's the firewood? I thought you went to get firewood?"

Then they realized what had happened and we were trying to minimize the whole thing but with a goose egg seemingly growing right out from my medulla oblongata, the accident was rather hard to hide. So out came the ice cubes, they escorted me to the couch which was quite welcomed because frankly couldn't walk any longer. And still the stars kept circling my head. I did recover the next day, and although my head actually did grow larger from the swelling, my ego shrank a whole lot in those 24 hours.

From a practical standpoint, what did we learn? In brief, have great respect for dead trees, always vacate the scene by leaving in a direction 90 degrees to the cut and always wear safety gear.

That being said, I look at those cowboys cutting down our ash trees and I think, "Now there's a job they can have."