The Woodsman’s Test

Note: I wrote this before I was thirty. I revised it years later. This is the first time it has appeared before anyone’s eyes but my own. It’s true mostly, with some exaggeration for effect. I have told it around the campfire on occasion, and when my friend Mark Hallenbeck heard it he said I should write it up. I told him I had already. 

When I was young a young man I was drawn to work. I loved work clothes and how they made me feel rugged and ready for anything, and I loved tools and the feeling of power that they lent me. By the time I was twenty five I had tried construction, trucking, farm work,  and retail.

In a new job, I paid attention to two things: the lingo and the tools of the trade. They both helped me fake it until I made it, buying me some time to live up to my interview exaggerations.

One confidence booster that I relied on was dressing the part. The subtle differences between the clothing worn by, say, a carpenter and a farmer, usually had practical roots and could tip the scales for me in the first few days. So I copied the clothing, the tool belt, the characteristic style of my new profession as closely as possible right from the start. Hell, you’d do the same: if you were hired as a cowboy you wouldn’t show up in what you’re wearing today.

That explains why on my first day as a logger in the Pacific Northwest, the boys were hard pressed to tell me from one of them. I had my yellow hard hat, my hobnail boots (used, and broken in), the proper style of rain jacket and gloves, and a fresh can of Copenhagen chewing tobacco. I noticed with satisfaction that half of them used the same black lunchbox with the cheap plastic Thermos bottle that I had chosen. They barely paid me any attention as we started the day.

My job was to drive a huge, huge log skidder up the mountainside and use it to drag huge, huge trees down to the landing where they were to be loaded on trucks for the long drive to the mill. The skidder was gigantic. It had a screaming, 400-horsepower turbocharged diesel engine, and it took seven steps to get from the ground to the seat. Four oversized tires with oversized chains clawed at the earth and would propel it forward with enough force to knock down trees eight inches in diameter. On one end was a small dozer blade to push things around, on the other was a winch with a wrist-sized cable with which we dragged monumental trees down the hill. The largest agricultural tractors that I had driven in New England were puny by comparison.

I was slow at first. We were paid by the truckload, so the other guys were hustling, dragging trees to the landing twice as fast as I was. When they noticed how slow I was, I just said, “Oh, I got hung up back there.” But they noticed the sissy little bits of tobacco I put between my lip and gum, nothing like the great wads that they favored, and I spit too much. Then I got the nickname New York, after answering the question, “Where you from?” So, even though I was getting faster, I didn’t really fool anyone.

No problem. The ribbing was good natured, I wasn’t slowing the operation down significantly, and the boss was letting me get up to speed. It was damn hard work, though, and since we were paid by the truckload, I was earning only half of what the other guys were. And I was risking my neck trying to keep ahead of ten tons of Douglas fir on a steep muddy track down the mountain. It reminded me of skiing down a tricky New England ski slope pulling a fat man in a Ski Patrol rescue sled.

We worked long hours, and we all took lunch together to avoid noise and dust. One day after I had been there about a week and a half, we gathered by the same old stump to eat lunch, and one older fellow, Harland, came up with an axe and leaned it against the stump before sitting down. Now, we drove skidders or trucks, and the fallers used chain saws, but I hadn’t seen an axe on the site yet.

“What’s the axe for, Harland, givin’ up your skidder?” I was nibbling at the bait.

“You any good with an axe?” Harland shot back.

“Pretty good.” I didn’t want to sound boastful.

With a deadpan face, Harland said, “I thought it was time we give you the woodsman’s test.” The five or six others barely reacted. “Oh, yeah, good idea,” one of them said.

“What’s the woodsman’s test?” Biting the bait now.

Jerry spoke up, “I did pretty good on the woodsman’s test, didn’t I?” A couple of guys laughed a bit, and Harland said, “Not as good as Warren. He really nailed it.”

Warren was the most disdainful of the bunch. “Doubt New York will nail anything.” Almost a sneer.

“Well, come on. What is it?” Swallowing the bait.

Harland stood up, grabbed the axe, and faced the stump, spreading his feet a little. “Better get over, Jerry. Wooden wanna hurtcha.” Jerry scooted away from the stump a little bit. Harland said, “I’m gonna swing this axe once,” and as he said it he sunk the axe blade into the stump with a sharp thud, “and you’re gonna swing it three times,” it squeaked as he pulled it back out. “…and if you sink it in the same mark that I just made all three times, well then you’re some kinda woodsman.” The mark was a quarter inch wide.

Now, I’ve been splitting wood since I was a little squirt, and I thought that this test was just too easy. Gimme that axe, I thought, and I’ll soon be top gun. But I tried to hide my enthusiasm. “OK,” I said, “I’ll give it a try.”

As I stood up and took the axe from Harland, he said, “Better use your own bandanna for a blindfold. Mine’s all sweaty.”

“Blindfold?” I said. Setting the hook.

“’Course!” spoke Warren, “My grandson could do it without a blindfold.” Warren looked all of 35.

How could I protest? Besides, I thought I stood a pretty good chance anyway. I spread my feet, took a stance, and rested the axe bit in the gap that Harland’s swing had left in the stump while he adjusted the blindfold. “Let her rip, New York.”

I swung and heard someone say, “Holy shit!” I pulled off the blindfold to see everyone bug-eyed looking at the axe. It was in the mark. Warren spit and said, “That’s only once. And he didn’t really sink it in very far.”

Blindfold back on, I took a breath to calm my nerves, and swung hard this time.

I snatched off the blindfold to see all the faces leaning in for a close look. I had missed, but it was damn close, less than an eighth of an inch. Jerry looked up at me with a grin, “That weren’t beginner’s luck!”

“We’ll count that,” Harland said, and nobody objected. “Closer’n I got.”

I realized I was grinning like a fool, and instantly put on a poker face. “One more,” I said.

“Better sink it in good this time,” Warren said.

I didn’t waste time getting nervous, just tried to duplicate the other swings, only harder.

I swung, and there was no thud; there was a crash. I had hit something else, and the feel and sound of it told me that I had somehow got turned around, and had sunk the axe through Jerry’s hard hat, his skull, and halfway down his neck.

My fingernails took some skin off with the blindfold this time.

The scene before me was bedlam. Five grown men were totally out of control, some doubled over holding their bellies, their eyes bugging out, mouths wide spilling bits of sandwich down their beards. Peals of laughter echoed off the trees at the edge of the clearing.

The axe was firmly sunk through my lunchbox, Thermos, sandwich and banana; part of the axe was all the way through and into the wood of the stump, so it stood there on its own as coffee seeped out around the axe blade. “You OK, New York? Y’ look pale!” This triggered another round of hilarious laughing. I know it was only a lunchbox, but it took me a minute to go through the phases of loss and accept the truth. The laughter didn’t die down during this time.

I wanted to laugh, but I kept the poker face. I looked closer at the part of the axe blade that I could see, and pointed it out to Warren.

I said, “It’s in the mark, see?”

“Huh?” He screwed up his face and stopped laughing for a second, then tried to start again, but then stopped and looked. Harland heard and looked closely, still out of breath and trying to get his laughter under control. “By the Jesus, he’s right! Will ya look at that! New York’s a woodsman!” Laughter all around, backslaps and arm punches. Too many arm punches.

I sat down and watched the other guys get themselves together and eat their lunches, still chuckling here and there. I left the axe where it was, took out my Copenhagen and put a huge wad of it in my mouth. “Top gun woodsman!” I said.