Chainsaw Confessions

I have a confession to make: I really like felling trees. I enjoy working with a chainsaw to make smooth, efficient, and fast cuts. In my experience, a good number of other arborists share these sentiments. Why, though? Arborists are supposed to help trees thrive in urban and suburban environments. Arborists nurture saplings and help find solutions for people seeking to live close to living giants without worrying about them harming property or persons. Why, then, would an arborist enjoy cutting down a tree? 

It’s not like there aren’t trees I haven’t regretted seeing come down. There are beautiful, healthy specimens that, for one reason or another, someone just wants to be rid of. Maybe it’s not the right size, or drops too much fruit, or doesn’t fit with their concept of a dream landscape. Other trees need to come down. They are dead or dying, or their structure poses too much of a risk to keep. 

However, whether or not a tree needs to come down has very little to do with why I enjoy felling trees. It has more to do with the process itself. Bringing a tree safely to the ground where one wants it to go involves a small rule set applied to almost countless natural variations in real time. It is like chess or go; it is a theme and variations composition that starts with a children’s melody and ends in blindingly fast arpeggios, ornaments, and articulations. 

To fell a tree, you make three cuts perpendicular to the direction you want the tree to fall. The first two cuts create a wedge on the side the tree will go. The last cut stops short of the apex of this wedge—or notch—to leave a thin hinge of wood that holds the tree to the stump until the hinge closes and leaves the tree in free-fall. That’s it… three cuts. But they have to be near-perfect. They have to account for the strength of the wood, the species of tree, how much the tree is leaning, how much space the person making the cuts has to retreat once hundreds of pounds of weight is set in motion. Sometimes, an additional cut or two is needed to ensure the tree doesn’t split down the middle, lift itself in the air, and crash down where the sawyer was standing (an event called a barber chair). The process is simple, but, like one of my first mentors told me, “The first thousand trees you fell are the hardest.” 

Arborists work hard to develop the skills that are needed to work with trees at all stages of their lives. Sometimes, this means being there when it is time for a tree to be removed. Other times, it is when keeping a tree healthy. We often use cuts very similar to felling a tree when taking pieces out of a tree to help remove dead branches or to reduce weight in an effort to reduce the risk of damage from wind or ice. Whatever the reason, skilled use of the chainsaw is essential to what we do, and it is a privilege to learn and, sometimes, enjoyable. 

- John Widman, Crew Leader