Chainsaw Training

My final week of fuel reduction training consisted of learning how to use a chainsaw. This is particularly important since it will be a big part of what I will be doing for the next six months, and it is a lot more complicated than I originally envisioned. My perception of lumberjacking consisted of what I'd seen in Saturday morning cartoons: trees being felled with a few hearty swoops of an ax. The reality requires a lot more thoughtful consideration and a careful analysis of the tree and its surroundings. You really have to be aware of the tree's lean and weight distribution, know which direction you want the tree to fall, and make the proper cuts at the right angle and depth so it goes exactly where you want it. If not, you might end up like this guy, or worse:



It's definitely no joking matter though; one survey found logging to be the job with the second-highest fatality rate in America. This was definitely reinforced by our story-loving instructors, who very excitedly interjected cautionary anecdotes at every opportunity of friends and co-workers who had lost eyes, legs, arms, and/or lives due to careless use of the chainsaw or general inattentiveness. It was definitely frightening to hear at first but also gave us a healthy respect for our tool and craft.

As with our prior training, we spent the first few days of the week in the classroom learning about safety, identifying parts, troubleshooting potential problems, and familiarizing ourselves with basic maintenance and cutting theory. The final three days, however, were spent out in the forest actually getting some hands-on experience. We worked with actual firefighters and personnel from the Bureau of Land Management Mother Lode field office, which manages property near the Eldorado and Tahoe national forests. On our first field day, our training ground was a wildland-urban interface, or WUI, where neighborhoods abut protected natural preserves, raising the stakes in the event of an actual fire. We were just steps away from homes and cement roads, but before us lay a vast tract of untamed brush.







Our only task the first day was simply to learn how to start the chainsaw and cut low-growing shrubs. The tool was a lot heavier than I expected and was tiring on the biceps, and it took some time to get comfortable with the unwieldy saw. Even igniting the engine took a little getting used to, especially for the women in the group since it does require some height and upper body strength. Now, chainsaws are generally very sturdy tools, but we also quickly learned how easily it was for them to malfunction if we didn't handle and maintain them properly.





The chainsaw sliced through the brush like a hot knife through butter, but it was still challenging to remember everything at once: your stance had to be off at an angle away from the whirring blades; you had to watch the surroundings for rocks camouflaged by moss and dirt that might cause kickback; you had to think about how the cut branches would fall so the swamper assisting you can easily pick up the remaining debris.







As I mentioned earlier, the firefighters are very passionate and animated about their stories, so we actually got relatively little work done and spent most of our time being regaled by their adventures. Additionally, since we could only go one at a time on the chainsaw, much of the day consisted of sitting around watching others work.







The next couple of days, we went deeper into the piney woods for some real tree-felling action. We had a really awesome instructor named Aaron, who again burnt plenty of time on stories and was also super patient while we screwed up time and time again. I think he also let us work on a few trees that may have been slightly larger than what we usually are allowed to cut, but it also gave us some room for error. The pines we felled were about 30 to 40 feet tall with a diameter of about 12 to 18 inches. I could think of worse ways to spend a week besides sitting in the shade of the beautiful evergreen forest on a cool, foggy Northern California morning listening to crazy tales of life on the fire line and hearing the buzz of the chainsaw.







There are several different chainsaw tasks we covered after felling a tree. We first learned about limbing, which is when you take the branches off a fallen tree as a kind of clean up.





Once the tree is free of branches, you buck the remaining log into foot-long sections that can be easily transported so as to not obstruct or create additional hazards. This is challenging because you have to be aware of the tension on the log based on how the tree fell so that you don't pinch and bind your chainsaw bar, which is actually a very common mistake and problem.





Finally, our last task was to cut down our very first tree. As I mentioned, there's quite a bit of thought and expertise that goes into this; it's not just slicing right through the trunk. I won't go into the technical details, but I'll just say it wasn't a pretty cut for me the first time around, but I think I improved over the course of the day. The practice cut pictured below is what one of the cuts is supposed to look like. It was made by a teammate; mine definitely wasn't as neat and clean as his.











Finally, here's me cutting down my first tree!





Timber! (...Actually you never say this unless you want to be laughed at by the other sawyers. What you do call is "Tree falling downhill!" and cautiously high tail it outta there.)

I'm rooting for trees

You may be curious as to what I've been doing for the past four weeks since I've returned to Sacramento, and now that my time on this project is finally coming to an end, I'm ready with a mega-update. You've heard very briefly about my wildland firefighter training, so I'll save that for another day. Half of our time since winter break has been with the Sacramento Tree Foundation, an amazing organization "dedicated to building the best urban forest for the Sacramento region." You can download our portfolio for this project here.


My team absolutely loved this project, especially after the cold, harrowing experience we had in Wyoming. It had everything we wanted in a project; we got to work outdoors, the sponsors were so fun and understanding, and the work was challenging and varied. For me, the latter part was biggest perk; even though the work was sometimes tedious, there was always plenty of new tasks lined up to keep me from getting bored. We worked at multiple sites through the city, including the Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Mather Regional Park, and a greenbelt in the Laguna Creek neighborhood. Sacramento is in fact nicknamed "the City of Trees" and claims to have more trees per capita than another city in the world — even Paris, France.

Our first day we began at the Sacramento Tree Foundation yard, a huge fenced-off lot where the organization maintains a nursery of young seedlings. Our very first task was shoveling fresh soil into individual planters, which are used in one of the organization's many educational programs.







We also did a lot of cleaning up the yard: raking, pulling weeds, reorganizing the rows of plants. Though the nursery didn't seem all that dirty, this process took us the full two weeks to complete. Mud piled up in the most random places, and the job of cleaning out stray leaves and weeds was a never-ending duty.













The next day, we were sent to a regional park to dig up damaged irrigation lines along a cycling trail. They were having a serious overpopulation problem with the voles, who were chewing through the newly laid pipes. Our job was to dig up the old lines and dig trenches for new pipes. The day was rather cold and damp, but I enjoyed the hauntingly atmospheric fog, which made for gorgeous photos.

















It wasn't until the third day that we actually got to go out and plant some trees at different locations throughout the city. We enjoyed traveling to various sites and learning about the many facets to the issue of building an urban canopy. A lot of the work we did was mitigation, which entailed planting trees to replace ones that had been cut down for new construction. It was encouraging to hear how these plantings were being supported by the development and government communities, however politically motivated they may be. We planted valley oaks, a native tree found only in California. Sacramento was once home to an abundance of elm trees, but due to a recent bout of Dutch elm disease, there has been a renewed focus on planting oaks. Most of the seedlings looked like nothing more than a twig in the ground, so it was amazing to ponder how such a fragile thing could grow into something so grand and majestic. One of the things I admire about the Sacramento Tree Foundation is, unlike many other tree-planting organizations, they perform maintenance on their trees and have a 98 percent success rate with their plantings.











Before the day ended, our team visited another planting site overlooking a creek, and our task there was to clear out invasive weeds that might threaten the young trees.







Aside from tree planting, we also laid irrigation pipes, which was actually quite an ordeal. The pipe came in huge rolls, and it tended to kink up when we stretched it out.







The second week we worked was extremely rainy, so we stayed in the office for most of the time helping them clean out their storage areas, put together some planting kits, and sort through files, which will help them input their forms into an electronic database.











Even though we were inside, it turned out to be more fun than I expected. The break room where we worked had nice, comfy couches, and we had unlimited access to tea and hot cocoa. What made the day, however, was our introduction Barkley, the Sacramento Tree Foundation mascot. It started when we found a box of random props and hats, which were used for some children's program many years ago. We were having so much fun with those that one of our sponsors decided to introduce us to the Barkley costume. This all culminated with a team performance of "In the Jungle", which agreed to sing in exchange for free T-shirts.













We attempted briefly to work outside, but the rain proved to be too intense, at least early on in the week. I do have to give credit to the wonderful rain gear that AmeriCorps issued us. It did just what it was supposed to do; it was a cool feeling to peel off those layers after a day in the pouring rain and still be completely dry. Even though the week ended gray and drizzly, we stuck it out in the yard disposing of rotted stakes and broken irrigation pipe and cleaning out the nooks and crannies of the nursery.









This was a very satisfying project for our team and a refreshing change of pace from our experience in Wyoming. It helped a lot that we were living back on campus and had our own rooms, Internet access, and a full kitchen. I actually learned a lot about trees and about the really ambitious and admirable initiatives the city and the Sacramento Tree Foundation has started to build the urban forest. You can read about the benefits of trees to the city at this Web page.