The Woodsman

Dawn breaks, casting a strange red hue through the misty morning fog and fumes of the departing convoy of trucks full of timber.

I watch the ringed flare of brake lights staring back at me with monstrous menace, bobbing and weaving with a trailing shadow atop the grimacing grim grin of buckling, overloaded axles.

They make the shockingly long journey across the eye of our storm and disappear into the radically retreated treeline; I finish my cigarette and grind its grubby butt boot first into freshly tilled dirt. I wonder what will grow from it?

We had arrived early to load the last of the logs from yesterday's harvest and set off for the city to saw, sell, and set sights on the next swathe of financeable forest.

We were supposed to spend the day reseeding the turmoil of soil we had spent the month carving our carnivorous capitalist carnage through. But everyone else had already left.

We, the loggers, had left a single tree standing at the top of the hill roughly in the centre of the section of woods we had been working in. A gravestone or marker to the grove of ancient trees that had fallen around it. A lone survivor. The last of its kind.

He, the man, had not found the gallows humour or poetry in our gesture. Specifically, he left me behind to fell it, and then ferry as much of it as I could fit in the back of my truck to follow them to market.

The seeds would go unsown, saved for the next job, when we might be able to spare the manpower and time.

I shoulder my axe, taking pleasure in being able to take the time to do this last tree old-school. There is a respect that flows from the slow and steady rhythmic beat of each swing, paid in sweat, bound in blood. A pact between man and land that is forgotten in the rushed contracts and mechanics of industry.

I start my ascent of the hill, stunned by the additional effort it takes to trudge onward through the still seeping rivers of sap flowing in the other direction. I tear heavy feet unstuck making slower progress than expected, having to pause halfway to catch my breath.

This is no mountain, no mythic or impressive peak. It's barely a hillock, a mere mound, raised in stature only by the even ground that surrounds it.

It has never posed a challenge to me before, and yet here I heave hefty lungfuls, pulled preciously as I restore myself. Hunchbacked, I begin looking up at the remaining climb, insignificant in size, yet strangely swollen to my tired eyes.

I hear it before I see it. Its screech, piercing and unexpected, buckles my already weary knees, and I lock gazes with it from a position of penance. A ghostly visage of shock white plumage positioned perfectly at the peak of the tree.

Those wise, wide, unblinking eyes burrow into mine weighing my worth and will. I stare back unsure and unsettled; usually, nature has flown far from the fury and fire at the belly of our business.

By now the sun has fully risen. Dancing beams of light pick through cloud, God's fingers, dazzling digits that flex and fidget into a halo around this lone creature in this final tree.

I shake myself out of this reverie to return to my feet. This weakness and whimsy has no place at the heart of a man. No more place than this nocturnal bird of prey does out in the light of day.

Grabbing hold of my grit, guts, and gumption, I groan with glorious purpose as I return to my renewed ascent. I break from the beam of the bird's beady stare. It instantly lets out a holler of hoots before I hear the rushing chorus of featherfall as it takes flight, recognising the road I am on.

I make the remaining march uphill with the same ease I have enjoyed on every other job, my muscles well-honed by labour and trials of trade.

I stretch in the shadow of leaves cast by today's task; a tree to topple, a trickle of treacle-slow coin for my purse, a tributary from the torrent that rushes into the purses that feed mine.

I take my first swing and bounce off bark ineffectually. A weaker man may wither, worn down and weary as I am, at this emasculation, but I spit into my hands, tighten my hold, and swing again.

The viciously sharp teeth at my axe's edge bite and burrow into the bough this time. Splintering shards spray out from a gratifying impact. The outer layer is frail and I quickly tear through to make an impressive indent that guides my progress to come.

I cannot help but to blow and bluster with the bullish bulk of my role. My hands begin to bleed and blister as the hole in the side of this tree continues to grow.

Every swing I take feels as though it is the hardest ever swung, and with every one I take I hear the epic in the poet's pen as the tree is overcome; I the hero of the piece and the story's soul sung, have to be shattered into shards at first to be woven into to sonnets spun.

I pause.

Rest axe.

Mop brow.

Breathe.

The voices in my head cease their dizzying dance as do the lights in front my eyes.

I am near the tipping point.

The trunk weakened enough that the triumph of gravity will wrench it the rest of the way.

Breathe. Heavy breaths that don't come easy.

I am soaked and sticky with sweat and sap.

My bloody hands burn from the sting as they mingle and merge with the tree's own arterial spray. Our life forces forced into cohabitation between the vice-like grip against the handle at the heart of this manic massacre. A heart of felled wood, to fell wood, of felwood forests of fables past.

Breathe deep.

Stiff back.

Rough, rigid, rugged shoulders perched on bulging biceps.

Picturesque perfect poise and poetry, sculpted in stone, carved first from rock, chipped and chiseled into the epic of Gilgamesh. Themes that echo in every heroic journey since.

The final blow struck sure enough to crack the heavens. An axe that spun independent of any single human pair of hands. It flew through the air and tore into the tenuous timber tendons that kept the tree tall.

A whirling whimpering wind whipped up with wondrous whomp on the worth of work.

A destructive discus-dance, dizzying, devoid of depth and divinity.

A thunderous tornado, tottering totem, tough and turgid, tumultous and triumphant.

The terryifying strength wielded in the weaponised weakness of masculine pride, the ridiculous rigidity that makes up the stained-glass story structure holding up the fragile ego of man.

The tree crashes to the ground in defeat, the woodsman slumps exhausted in victory.

If a lumberjack dies to fell a tree in the forest, does the tinkling tithe of gross profit still make a sound?