The Chainsaw Diaries

The Chainsaw Diaries

In the tradition of Olden Times, a riddle: What grows in the autumn as the sunshine wanes, and shrinks in the winter, as the daylight gains? (or, as your husband complains. Well, maybe not complains, mainly just gazes and sighs): Answer – the woodpile.

Several years ago I awoke one late winter morning to the disquieting sensation that my nose, and therefore by extrapolation the house, were colder than they should be. Further evidence, such as frantically flipping the levers on (and swearing at) the thermostat and the circuit breaker box to no avail supported my sneaking suspicion that the furnace was in fact on the proverbial fritz.

At the time there was no Man Of The House onto whose shoulders I could foist this annoying problem, but being possessed of a large stubborn streak and an even larger pile of seasoned timber spread liberally over approximately 10 acres, plus a functional woodburning stove, I figured that with a little bit of industry I could keep myself warm until some later date when I actually had time to worry about the furnace problem , like Julyof 2012 for instance . I soon discovered, however, that what I lacked was a working chainsaw and the skill set necessary to operate one.
I approached the problem with no little trepidation, armed with the sure and certain knowledge that any piece of machinery equipped with that tool of the devil known as a “pull start” (or in my case, “that $%!!!(&%$$%!!! thing…..”) was likely to present some annoying, blood-pressure-raising challenges if not wrestled to the ground and subdued right from the start.

The day came when I could put the adventure off no longer. The woodpile was dwindling by the hour, and I realized with resignation and cold toes that I was about to be compelled to buy a chainsaw . Neither of the alternatives: wheedling someone else to cut up the fallen timbers in the woods, or worse yet, actually paying for cut firewood, appealed to me.

“I want a ladylike chainsaw” I told the salesman primly. I suppose this statement would have been more effective had I delivered it while teetering on high heels at the garden store assistance desk; as it was, my rubber boots, dirty sweats and even dirtier barn coat and hat probably detracted from the effect. Nonetheless the young man controlled his reaction while I explained, “it has to be small enough that it doesn’t kill me to handle it, and IT MUST START RELIABLY.” (Or I will have a stroke and die in the woods of sheer frustration, I added silently). He introduced me to a 16” bar bright orange model, its new chain gleaming wickedly in the pale March sunshine. He gave me some succinct driving lessons, made sure I was armed with tips on how to start it, and off I went, secure in the knowledge that I could now use up some of our fallen wood and thereby “stick it to the man” for at least another month or two. I’m not sure which hypothetical “man” I had in mind – the utilities company, the fuel oil barons…who knows? But I felt empowered and self-righteous as I pulled the starter rope and flipped up the choke.

The late great naturalist Aldo Leopold wrote a lovely piece about cutting down a dead tree with a two-person manual saw, slicing through the years with a hypnotic rhythm echoed in his words, interspersed with the refrain “rest! Cries the chief sawyer, and we pause for breath…” While my chainsaw didn’t have quite the same panache, there was a certain satisfaction in starting it up: Vrip, Vrip, putt, putt, vroom, VROOM!

2007’s Hurricaine Ike refused to stay corralled in its Gulf of Mexico birthplace, and sent a windstorm of epic proportion yowling across southwest Ohio all through a sultry, overcast September Sunday. I distinctly remember sitting with my husband of one year on the backyard picnic table, listening with dismay at the sounds of trees being shredded in the relentless gale. On the one hand, I worried about the survival of the most picturesque of our trees – a particularly shapely tulip tree in the front yard, the massive oak and hickory trees that stand as twin sentinels on the edges of our property, a soaring sycamore that we had planted as a bedraggled arbor day twig some 35 years before – but on the other I had to work hard to suppress an unsettling current of excitement – hot damn, we’d have plenty of firewood again!

As it happened, all my “pet” trees survived, but a number of others succumbed to the phenomenon of wind shear, which would rip the top out of one vulnerable tree and send it crashing into the next, beheading that tree …and so on, in a weird arboreal domino effect. Generally speaking the fractures occurred about 20 feet off the ground, so we spent a number of entertaining autumn days drafting plans of attack based on the challenges of getting these sylvan casualties to fall the way we wanted without getting ourselves killed in the process. The resulting large-scale timber operations filled the woodshed to overflowing. Practically a battalion of debtors were able to work off their delinquent clinic accounts. Everybody went home happy, and we stayed warm for months.

In the past five or so years, in a development entirely unforeseen by my younger self, I’ve become quite the lumberjack. I recently upgraded to an 18” bar saw (still orange) with an even more reliable #$%^%!! pull start. Honest - in the vernacular of SW Ohio, it “runs good.” There is a certain satisfaction that comes with revving it up on a cold winter day. And I can walk the walk and talk the talk of fellow chainsaw users – discussing bar size, chain sharpening, the strange alchemy of gas/oil mixes, and the relative qualities of different brands of bar oil (or as they say around here, “barawl”). With my fellow members in Club Chainsaw (including my best riding buddy, Martha, who loves her saw too: a schoolteacher with a chainsaw – the mind reels…), we can chat about the relative merits of wood: hickory(good), locust (hard to get started but long burning), oak (lovely, very little “trash” to remove from the fireplace) and that holy grail of firewood, osage orange, which, when mentioned, elicits a knowing “ohhhhhhhh, yeaahhhhhhhhhhhh” from other experienced local woodburners who then launch into stories about its prowess: “I once put a piece in the stove and it was still burning three weeks later!” “That’s nothing, I completely melted a stove when I stuffed the firebox full of osage!”

Of course, heating with firewood has its downsides: the ash that isn’t continually being carried out the door in a metal bucket applies itself to furniture, walls and ceilings. Your clothes, hair and pets smell of woodsmoke. There are scorch marks on the throw rug in front of the fireplace (and maybe on your pets….) And there is that nagging question hanging over your head for at least 6 months out of the year: are we going to have enough wood to get through next winter?

Despite these problems, we continue to use the woodstove, though the furnace has been repaired long since. I like the white noise of the blower, the warmth and the cozy glow on a cold winter night, and the fact that we can heat the place up to near-sweltering temperatures without burning a bit of fuel oil. I like to watch the pets seek out the heat and sprawl contentedly in front of the hearth at night. It all fosters a certain contentment, a reassurance of sorts that as we now enter into this period of the year which my husband – no mean wordsmith himself – glumly and resignedly refers to as The Long Dark, it’s within our power to make it a bit more bearable, if not downright pleasant.

Vrip, Vrip, putt, putt, vroom, VROOM, indeed.