There are over 3 trillion trees on planet earth. No, I haven’t counted them. I might’ve missed one or two that way.

I’m surrounded by pinyon, juniper and ponderosa, with an understory of angry oakbrush that’s like a crowd at Wal-Mart on Black Friday to get through. A lot of the trees are dying. The pinyon, especially, are getting hit hard. It’s estimated that with the continuing droughts and mild winters, Ips and pinyon beetles will kill off most of the pinyon in the next decade.

So every year, I’m out there with the chainsaw. And since I’m not very good with machines, every year, I break the chainsaw. This year, the chain kept coming loose. And then when I finally got it all tensioned right, I bring it out to cut down this huge pinyon, and it whines and coughs up blue smoke and cuts black friction tracks in the bark and well, the chain needs sharpening. Of course, in the era of the virus, this is now not possible. So it’s back to the handsaw, one of the few high-quality items I purchased at Wal-Mart (not on Black Friday). This thing will cut through anything, albeit slowly.

So I’m out there, cutting and sawing. On my knee, on my ass in the needle bed. Stooped over. Maybe an hour or two a day until my arms ache and my back backtalks me. The weight of the column of the log presses down and my handsaw gets stuck again and again. I use the orange plastic wedge I got with the chainsaw to keep the cutmark open. I hammer it in with a mallet. The blade still gets stuck. I bring out a thin handsaw made for cutting other things and make maybe a 1/4 inch of progress. I bring out the ax. I hack away at the trunk with my blunt instrument. I mean, this is the tallest, thickest pinyon I’ve ever seen, the needles browned, the gray trunk with more bore holes in the bark than the acne scars on my cheeks.

Each day I’m out there, hacking away, mostly sawing. Using the Wal-Mart saw, then the one with finer blade. Blow after blow with my ax. This isn’t a post about how to properly fell a tree, btw.

Unrelenting spring winds tussle the treetops. The crowns of the pondies sway. But the bases stay steady, unmoving. I guess that’s how all rootedness works.

I’m not making any progress. The hell with this. I’ll wait until I get the chainsaw fixed.  I move on through the P-J, limbing and felling pinyon that have a lot little less pitch. Then I try cutting some of that damn oak brush down by the fence line. But I can’t stop looking back at that half-felled pinyon. I think of how hunters in many Native American tribes traditionally blessed and sometimes prayed to the animals they felled. Maybe I should bless that tree. I contemplate on how a Zen woodsman might conclude that my pinyon just isn’t ready to go down yet, on how Michelangelo, were he a tree cutter, might say that I haven’t liberated its essence from the block of wood.  Fuck all that. I’d been working on that tree little by little with my little dull handsaw for about 10 days now. What’s the difference between persistence and stubbornness? I never knew that line.

I walk back to that pinyon. In Zenlike fashion, I’m cursing it and demanding that it die, getting all emotional, swaying like the pinetops in the wind.

Up to this point, I’d been very careful about making a notch cut and a hinge, and then making a felling cut from the other side of the trunk. Beavers, they sometimes die by the trees they cut. After about two weeks, I finally just resort to hacking that giant pinyon until it’s beavered all around the edges and stands like a mushroom rock on a pedestal. Don’t know how the trunk’s still standing. But I guess trees, in the face of those incessant gales from the west, trees evolved to stand up to a lot. They don’t go down easy.

I’ve heard of falling trees corkscrewing on their way down. I’m not sure which way it’ll fall, so I plan my routes of escape. I don’t want to end up a beaver.

I grab some rope from my garage and sling it around some of the lower limbs.  I don’t bother to tie a bowline knot around the trunk like you’re supposed to. No, I only look that shit up when I’m writing up this post. I start pulling. I’d been pushing on it for days, feeling the give slowly increase. Now, I pull and it bows but it rebounds back up. I pull and it swings back to standing, building momentum. It’s not ready to go down yet. So I walk up to it – I named him Henry – I walk up to Henry and chop away with my crude and blunt instrument: my ax.

Now, I’m really sinking the bit of the ax into the soft meat of the bole. I move back toward the gang ropes. I pull and Henry rocks back and forth, but still won’t come down.

I hack away with toe and heel (of the ax, that is).  I run away from the base, pull on the rope. The trunk loosens. I do this maybe six, seven times. Finally, after trying this for about an hour – Tim-berrrr! The familiar crack of the trunk like thunder. Henry falls in the opposite direction of where I’d planned. Abetted by the wind, I suppose.

That’s how a city boy cuts down a big tree. But I did it with my own hands. That’s 3 trillion minus 1, by the way.

© 2022 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within