Making Firewood

It's the middle of July and with the current state of the economy, we've been having a bit of lull in business.  Ordinarily, this is the peak season, but this "new normal" means that our present lodge guests are having pretty much the whole resort and lake to themselves.  And, when business is slow here, it is slow everywhere as would be indicated by the bar graphs of Ely.  The bar graphs are the canoes on canoe racks in Ely.  Outfitters will prominently display their rental fleets and usually this time of year, the racks are all empty, devoid of 40 or 50 kevlar canoes because they would be all out in the woods on a grand adventure.

The other evening, I had the opportunity to attend an opera in Ely.  It was Carmen and was well done.  The Washington Auditorium  is not the Teatro alla Scala opera house in Italy which is noted for its near perfect sound projection, but it was pretty dang good!   I saw Carmen back in Graz, Austria and didn't have a clue as to what was going on because I am Frenchically-challenged, but I still had a blast!  So, I really looked forward to seeing it in Ely one more time because the odds of my getting a chance to see it live again are pretty slim without having to travel to more hoighty-toighty locales such as Minneapolis.  This time, they translated the music on a screen above and the simplicity of the story was great.  Had they cut out the singing, the story could have been wrapped up in about 10 minutes, but  I guess that is the point.  Which brings me back to my wandering point...

As I drove into town with my mom (Annette isn't an opera fan and my mom has never attended one before), I passed several outfitter bar-graphs at 6:35 PM on July 14, in Ely, Minnesota right next to the environmentally-referred-to "gold mine" called the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.  One prominently-displayed bar graph had NO canoes off of their kevlar rack.  NO empty spaces what...so...ever.  Plus, their pile of aluminum canoes was higher than I've ever seen.  I did not realize they had acquired that many canoes over the years and from what I could see, all were on land and in full display.  Then, the next outfitter I passed, had no spaces between his outfitting vans - the ones that they use to haul people to and from entry points.  All vans were in for the night and there were no cars in front of the business - on July 14!  They looked as if they had closed for the evening.  Usually outfitting vans are somewhere out there picking canoes up and dropping off customers, but the indications where that they not rolling.  Further down the street, at a few more outfitters, the same story.  This is not good.

If you've ever wanted to come up to Ely to enjoy solitude, well, you could have done that anytime in the last 50 years even when all of us businesses were all packed.  But, now, you can come up and experience literal (not virtual) solitude.  There are very few people on the water and plenty of openings.  If you were worried about things like motor traffic, don't be.  This is the time to come up and see what the future might become if we continue down our present path.  Town is busy with the summer-homers who come up all at about the same time with the grandkids but then they roll the side walks up for the night at about 5 PM.

So, that explains why I was able to go out and cut some firewood.  Last winter was brutal and we almost ran out of propane but just made it. I ran out of firewood by mid February however so I got Curt  and the gear together and went across the road to begin dropping some of my assets on the ground - AKA  trees.  I figure instead of letting them stand, rot, and go to waste, I'm going to fell them, buck 'em up, split them and heat my house.  So, we collected the Bobcat, chainsaw, chains, cable, gas, bar-oil, and headed across the Fernberg.

I just put a new chain on the saw and it was cutting like a hot knife through butter.  The first tree was a birch and as Curt sawed into it, he, of course, hit the big FAT nail that was in the center of that felled tree.  DANG IT!   Now the saw was cutting like a hot knife through brick.  I gave Curt some Bobcat instructions with the grapple to clean up the brush and ran home through the woods to re-sharpen the now "old" saw blade.

Back at the wood-cutting event horizon, we dropped several trees, cut off the tops and branches and made some piles of logs with the aid of the greatest  tool ever invented - the Bobcat.  (What a back-saver that thing is!)  While Curt was moving some logs, I went in to cut a birch of medium size and about 30 feet high and 12 inches in diameter at the base.  It was in thick brush so I had to saw my way into it.  Dead balsams, balsam branches,  brush, etc.  There were two slanting balsams in front of the intended path of falling I had planned for that tree.   Since it wasn't a difficult drop area (no buildings or structures to avoid) I decided to ignore the two slanting, four inch diameter trees and proceed with the notch in the birch.  Usually, I plan an escape route as felling can be very dangerous, but I must be getting cocky (or stupid) in my in my older age.  The tree began to fall with the back cut, just as planned and was dropping right on target.  Then as it approached the ground, I thought everything was hunky-dory and looked ahead and at the landing and not the lower end of the tree which was right next to me.  The lower end of the tree which was no longer tethered to the stump as my saw was sharp, slid down the balsams in front of it, swiping sideways and plowed right into me.  Think of it as a moderately-swung, 12" diameter baseball bat hitting me in the shins, pinning me against a log behind my calves and knocking me backwards.  Ow.  When it stopped moving in two seconds, my right foot was stuck.  I struggled to get unstuck quickly because I did not want Curt to touch that tree with the Bobcat thirty feet away while I was pinned and there was no way to tell him not to do that because my foot was stuck.  I couldn't out-yell the engine from that distance, either.   So, yank and struggle and the other log on the ground barely moved just enough to let my ankle squeeze through, freeing me.  Happy to be free once again, back to work with the saw I went.

We began to pull down a few poplars that were leaning towards the highway.  One was a pretty good size tree and about 14" in diameter at the bottom. It had a moderate lean on it and I secured a chain around it and  hooked a cable to the chain while Curt positioned the Bobcat in line with my planned notch.  I dragged the free end of the chain to hook it to one of the tines of the claw grapple attachment and had Curt pull back with the Bobcat to tighten the cable to test the 70 foot high tree by shaking it.  The tree shook at the top just like they all do, but this maneuver also insures that the cable is connected and chain, six feet up around the tree, won't be letting go at the most inopportune of times.  There was hardly any traffic on the road, but past experiences with the evil spirit called  "Fate"  reminds me that should the tree land on the highway, 327 vehicles will instantly appear and have a chain reaction pile-up at that very moment.  And, of course, I would be responsible.  So, we don't test "Fate".  We test cables and chains even out in the woods.  It's just safer.

So, with everything looking good, I show Curt the hand signals I will be using and the one about waving my arms means "stop".  I go to cut the notch and it's giving me a hard time.  I think I need to peel the edges off the bar because they wear down and form a bead where the saw chain rides causing the bar to stick instead of slide.  I finally get the front notch cut with the wedge of white wood cleared and begin the back cut.  As I'm cutting, I signal to Curt to pull and he begins backing up as planned.  The tree begins to straighten up and go the other way as it was supposed to, but I hear cracking above me and remembered the birch baseball bat of earlier and the fact that Curt has very little time in the Bobcat.  I literally blasted out into my escape route, trying to create distance from that tree because being crushed by the trunk or skewered by a large falling branch, has to be an awful way to go.  After my first powerful step, moving with my cat-like reflexes,  I hooked my toe on something and rolled like a hippo launched out of a potato gun.   Oh, that went SO well... I think I somersaulted twice while watching alternating views pass of the brilliant blue sky dipped in shades of green and then brown dirt also dipped in shades of green.   As I was rolling around in the dirt on my back, I was also straining to look up to watch the poplar fall in perfect alignment with the Bobcat.  It missed me by a relative mile and landed right where it was supposed to fall.  Apparently, I developed a serious case of the jitters at the last second.

I picked up my cap, dusted myself off, took my wounded pride and unhooked the Bobcat.  Curt wanted to know why I was rolling around in the dirt.  We finished cutting and stacking and went home for the day.

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