In the moment a hundred year old giant impacts the ground, all ninety plus feet of trunk and timber explode in the climax of a carefully planned execution. It’s then I know that I’m out of the woods, so to speak, and my strict adherence to felling techniques has paid off as I live to chop another day.

A surgeon would no sooner cut with a rusty scalpel as I’d head out into the woodlot with a dull saw. A sharp chain prevents undue wear on the saw’s engine, and allows me to evenly and cleanly slice through a thirty-six inch thick tree with an eighteen-inch bar. Done right, it’s a hot knife through butter, and the rich, sharp smell of pine chips billows up from the cut.

Once I’ve decided where I want the towering white pine to lay, I cut a ninety-degree notch like a big mouth that will close when the tree is horizontal. I check for potential hazardous limbs from above, coined widow makers by old woodsmen with dark experiences. I then plunge the bar of the saw deep into the trunk and begin working my way around to the other side of the notch with the throttle wide open.

My eyes and ears are in tune, watching for the expansion of the kerf (gap left by the chain) and listening for the whip like cracking of the vertical fibers as the massive pinus strobus begins it’s final decent. Almost imperceptible at first, but enough to tell me to get clear, it picks up speed exponentially and snaps smaller trees like match sticks in its monumental curtain call. Timberrrrrr.