Tree Hugger

There is a trail on my parents land. The trail follows a ravine down a steep wooded hillside. Once it was the driveway to the original farmstead. The farmer and the road builder are long gone. There would never be a reason to drive down the road as it no longer goes to anything except a dead end in a forest of mature trees. Someday the last of the road will melt away into the woods.

Still, we keep the trail mostly clear. Its a nice place to walk.
My dad mentioned to me one day that there was a big fallen oak blocking the trail. He was a 'just get it done' kind of guy. I knew the logs would be cut and efficiently pushed into the ravine. No matter the size of the project, man, leverage and machine would achieve the desired result.

I thought of the waste of pushing a 150 year old red oak into a ravine.

Most of the tree was on a steep hillside above the trail. The butt end of the trunk was suspended in the air perched on the stub of a broken off branch of another oak. The crown of the tree was downhill across the trail. You could see the branches were loaded with the weight of the trunk.

A week went by and the tree remained. My father had uncharacteristically avoided it. I went to look again. The trunk was huge in circumference and straight and, by the look of it, sound with no branches for many feet.

Later that week I happened to meet a guy who owned a portable saw mill. He showed me boards he had sawn and told me stories of logging on his farm in Wisconsin. He could turn logs into boards and it would cost me very little. I would just have to get the logs into an open, flat field and help him with the sawing.

All week I kept seeing the tree in my mind and imagining the smell of fresh cut lumber. I decided that if I was very careful I could have the tree for lumber.

I decided not to rush. I spent a lot of time cutting the branches away from the crown. I considered each cut before I made it and was careful to do it in such a way that if a branch was under pressure and kicked back I would not be hit. If I was the least bit tired I rested. I moved each cut branch away before I would start on the next branch.

Finally I had cut away most of the crown. A few finger sized branches remained, the trunk was still suspended high in the air. I could not understand how such little branches could keep the log from rolling loose. I decided there was an optical illusion with the angle of the hill and the tree trunk. The trunk was balanced on the nub and would not come loose without a push I told myself.

I was still very careful. The trunk was imposing. Just being near something that large and ready to fall made me nervous. It was starting to rain just a little. I was hot and the small drops on my face felt good. I positioned myself, standing on the hillside in the leaves and forest litter in a way that the log could not roll and hit me. If the log rolled, which it wouldn't, it would go past my right leg and down the hill. The remaining branches were very small. I could just touch them with the saw and they would be gone. There was nothing I could do wrong.

Still I hesitated. I revved the saw and touched the first twig and it fell away. I touched the second twig from my position of safety and surprisingly as it fell away the trunk unexpectedly began to roll. I had prepared myself for this possibility and knew that if I stood still there was no danger.

I had not counted on reflexes. When the big log moved something within me said "jump!". I knew I shouldn't move but I still flinched. I arched slightly backwards. The leaves and soil on the hillside were a little wet and the jerk made me slip slightly downhill putting one leg in the path of the falling, rolling log. The log caught my right leg as it went by and up ended me.

Reflexively my left hand came off of the saw to break my fall. I had released the throttle and the chain on the saw was coasting. As I hit the ground the coasting chain met the thick leather work glove on my left hand.

I was staring right at the chain as it ripped through my glove. Reflexively I grabbed the area at the base of my thumb and held tight. I layed there on the ground in the increasing rain wondering how badly I had cut myself.

At first when I attempted to stand my bruised right leg would not respond. I left the saw idling on the ground knowing it would stop on its own and took tiny, stiff steps up the trail. As I moved my thigh muscle started to loosen up and I could take bigger steps. I wanted to run but I did not.

When I reached my vehicle, I put my injured hand against my gut and opened the van door. I drove to the clinic and got stitched up. I have a scar and a numb spot in my thumb to show for the experience. My thigh was so badly bruised I thought it would never get better, but I did.

I ended up getting the log out of the woods by the end of that summer along with several others. My friend with the sawmill came after the first snow during the first cold snap and we made boards.

We also destroyed homes and tore apart families-of mice. It seemed like all of the logs had rot in them. Families of mice scattered when the saw came near. The sawyer told me trees fall for a reason and rarely do you get good wood from dead falls, even if they look good. Better to choose a live tree if you want good lumber.

I ended up with some boards and a lot of fire wood. I gained an appreciation for an oak board. To this day I feel funny when I buy wood from a lumber yard. It seems so cheap.

A year or so ago a big white oak on our land lost all of its leaves in August. I knew the leaves would not come back. The tree was very near the field of previous sawing. I was tempted, but I thought "too busy", "too much work", "trees die for a reason".

Soon after that a man called me and pointed out that I had some nice cherry trees on the adjoining land and that I should let him log it. I told him I would think about it.

Even the best commercial loggers leave a mess and I decided it wasn't worth it.

I walked in the woods. I hadn't realized how big those cherry trees had grown. I could hear the sawyer talking, "If a person is going to log their own wood it is better to cut the tree before it dies and goes to waste". I would hardly miss one or two trees I thought. Still, too much work and time, but an interesting thought.

Summer and fall went by, then one winter night I got a call. My father had unexpectedly passed away. Sometimes we take for granted that that everything remains the same. As the time went by it was strange that his well used equipment sat idle in the pole shed.

The cherry trees and the oak I wanted were marked in my mind. I took my dad's saw and his tractor and cut the trees, cleaning up after myself as I went, thinking how I was the same and different from my father.

My original friend with the saw mill had long since sold it and moved away, but strangely, another friend bought his own saw mill. In the summer we sawed the logs, white oak and cherry into boards. I built a shed with a clear roof and solar powered ventilation to dry the wood. Now I have a shed full of boards.

I'm not sure what I will do with the wood. With the time and effort that went into them, the boards are worth too much to sell. How many people would go through what I went through to make boards without knowing what they were going to use them for? It is a little like building a boat in your basement and realizing there is no way to get it out.

Curiously, I have run into others with the same kind of boards and they wouldn't think of selling them either. I have seen this type of wood in estate sales. Considering their probable history, they sell too cheaply.

So what is our time here on earth worth? What is a mature tree worth? How could a board in my shed be worth ten times that of the same board in a lumber yard? I have decided each board contains part of what went into making it.

****

Our land is surrounded by state forest. All of my life I have walked here. I love the woods. I can stand quiet and unmoving for a long time just looking around and listening. I know the big trees and seeing one in the distance is like seeing a familiar person on the street.

I almost said they are like old friends. It is true I have hugged more than one tree, but if a tree could return affection it may sense something else in that hug. A tree would be uneasy to have me as a friend. It would sense my parentage and know I could not be trusted. It would know I was ogling it's long straight trunk, thinking of the fine boards it would produce. I have a wood lust.

There is nothing like felling a big tree. The physical experience, the sound the smell, the feeling of accomplishment, the wood, the magical wood.

The forest is safe from me for now, I know the cost of taking a tree and I already have my wood safely stored in a shed.

As a kid I thought about being a forest ranger. I thought about protecting the forest and the animals and the fish. How good and right it would be to have a job with such a connection to nature. I never did it, I was diverted by a degree in geology and the secrets of the earth.

I was shocked to discover that geologists work for corporations that strip mine for coal, or destroy acres of land searching for metal or oil. The progression seemed to be, learn about the thing you love and then be on the front line of it's destruction.

We consume madly and profess to love nature. We may like eating meat but we can't stand to kill the cow.

I never got a job in Geology. I'm further up the food chain selling real estate. I let someone else carve up the land.

****

Not long ago I was in my office and a man wearing coveralls walked in. No doubt he was hard working. He had a business to run. He told me he was a logger and he had purchased timber adjoining my brothers land. He needed access to get the logs out. I gave him my brother's number and continued with my day.

Later when I spoke with my brother I told him the fellow seemed decent enough and that he was just doing his job like anyone else. The state, I said, puts the trees up for bid and someone buys them. We both agreed we would prefer the trees not be logged but these things, we said, are beyond our control.

Later my mother said she heard saws and that the logging must have started. On a quiet Sunday morning I walked that direction with the dogs. I walked a trail I've walked for many years thinking I would find the place they were logging. The trail is on a high hill in the woods. As I looked to my right through the trees there was an unnatural amount of light filtering through the branches, even for winter. I cut off the trail and made to cross over the ridge line and head down through the trees.

I am sure I can't explain what I saw, but I will try. I looked across a vista I had never been able to see before. There were stumps and slash and deep muddy ruts black against the light dusting of snow. Along the edges of the destruction the top of a tree still hung tangled in other trees blowing in the breeze. In disbelief I picked my way down the hillside. I followed the muddy ruts with the strangely clear winter sky that should not have been there above me, tracking the monster that had caused the destruction.

At the top of the hill the muddy scar opened to a snow covered field. There, in front of me lay the forest, cut into logs layed out like frozen bodies after some natural disaster. Each log with a bar code affixed to the end. In another setting I may have looked at each individual log and admired it as lumber and imagine beautiful trim or furniture that could come from it. I will admit I have walked there since and told myself its not so bad.

But when I first stood there everything in me said wrong, wrong, wrong. Adding to the twisting of my gut was the knowledge that the value of each tree was relatively small in dollars.

Our generation will never walk in those woods again. Our children or Our children's children will never walk past a 150 year old oak in those woods. The variety of trees that made up the forest will not return for generations. Some would say it is an insult on the earth and that mother nature is calling for our help.

I am a tree hugger, but I still sense the truth. We humans are small as a mouse. The earth who has seen meteors and cataclysmic volcanic eruptions is more durable than we would imagine. We are the fragile little ones, we are the ones on a timeline.

The nature of our existence requires that we look at history and say everything leads to us. We are the completed work of art. The earth is ours for the taking. The truth is the opposite. Our culture, our thoughts and beliefs are like a delicate latticework of crystals growing over time, a delicate decoration. If we collapse, the earth will not care. The earth will be here.

It is a telling fact that the Department of Natural Resources describes our woods in terms of board feet of lumber for the different species. I wonder,what formula we should use to balance the value of wood against the value of the woods?

Forest managers will tell you if you don't cut mature trees down they will just fall down and be a total waste of good lumber.

That is true if you are not a mouse.

When you are a master of the universe you need not be concerned with with the lesser inhabitants.

A man from Texas recently said we can save the country from forest fires by cutting down the trees. I don't think it is the fires that we need saving from. I don't know what to do so I just watch.

I only wish I had walked in those woods last month with my sons.

J. T.