Pushing and Pulling a Crosscut Saw

To the Editors:

Carl Demrow’s article on the crosscut saw (“Tricks of the Trade,” Autumn 2009) awakened an old memory of felling and bucking large white pine on timber holdings north of Blind River in northern Ontario. What did it, in particular, was his admonition to let the saw float in your hands on the “push” stroke, and pull steady and straight on the other.

I had finished my freshman year in Forestry at the University of Toronto and was putting in summer work experience in logging operations. I was assigned to a three-man crew consisting of a skidder (using horses), an experienced Newfoundlander logger, and me. On the first morning, while felling and bucking 2- to 3-foot diameter pine, I was determined not to be the first to call for a rest break. I was tremendously cheered when Old Mac, the Newfie, suggested a break after about an hour of sweaty labor (with black flies galore).

As we sat, he took from his vest pocket (as if it were a cigar) one of his rolled up pancakes from breakfast and said these unforgettable words: “Look laddie, I don’t mind you ‘riding’ on the saw, but do you have to drag your feet along the ground?” These humbling words were followed by a lesson on “floating” when he pulled, and “pulling straight” through when I pulled. I had been pushing a little on his stroke, and bending the saw slightly toward my body as I pulled back.

The following summer, I was pulling again, but this time on oars, in a bateau, as we “brought down the rear” on a white pine log drive on the Mississagi River – possibly the last true log drive in the East. I conducted myself without any major gaffes.

Larry Hamilton, Charlotte, Vermont

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Fair Chase

To the Editors:

Robert Kimber’s Autumn 2009 “Up Country” column talks about deer hunting. He mentions using stands. After reading the column, I talked with a friend, a 75-year-old trapper and hunter. He said that in the old days, no one used scent lures or deer stands. While not offering an opinion one way or the other about artificial tactics, he said that if it’s legal, some hunters use whatever ways they can to deceive their quarry.

My friend’s hunting methods matched my personal, also old-fashioned, idea of hunting: even odds. Hunters use their natural talents and skills to stalk deer that blend into the landscape and tap into native abilities like keen hearing, scent, and eyesight.

So, I ask Mr. Kimber and other hunters: why a change in hunting tactics?

For the record, I am not anti-hunting. Since most natural predators have been extirpated in New England, the need exists to cull the herd to prevent starvation and wasting disease. Hunting for food is understandable.

Grace Lilly, Swanzey, New Hampshire

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Nuisance Raccoons

To the Editors:

Another reason to damn the Third Reich! Ich habe ein washbar argernis! I would love to know how to curtail the raccoon visits to my corn patch and the bird seed that does not include a final solution.

I am trying garlic capsules. Any other ideas?

Rachel A. Hexter, Greensboro Bend, Vermont

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Tulips in New Hampshire

To the Editors:

In the Autumn 2009 “Species in the Spotlight,” one of your editors, Virginia Barlow, speaks appreciatively of tulip poplars she remembers growing in Connecticut and her poor success trying them in Vermont. Their range must be a little further north than she suggests, as illustrated by this photo of a pair growing across the street from the Peterborough Public Library in southwest New Hampshire. They are maybe 16 inches at breast height and were apparently topped years ago, perhaps to control their growth under the power lines, for they branch into several leaders about 10 feet off the ground.

Incidentally, the Peterborough library is the oldest library in the U.S. – and maybe the world – to be supported by public taxes, antedating even the Boston Public Library. Certainly there are older libraries, but they started as private, church, or university collections.

Tulip poplars at Peterborough Public Libraray.
Photo by John Patterson

John Patterson, Peterborough, New Hampshire

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Role of the Beaver; Roll of the Tree

To the Editors:

The Autumn 2009 issue includes a great beaver story, “A Logger with Four Feet and a Tail,” by Bernd Heinrich. The author gives one very interesting reason why the beavers enjoy a high success rate and usually get the trees to fall all the way to the ground with few hang-ups: hardwood trees naturally extend their branches toward the light, so as long as the beaver cuts the trees growing nearest to the pond, they will fall toward it, since most of the branch weight will be on the pond side of the tree.

Another reason for their success, I think, is this: since the beaver’s cut is completely around the trunk of the tree, there is very little wood left to hold, therefore the tree is free to roll one way or the other off other nearby trees rather than hang up. When loggers cut a tree, they usually cut toward the notch with their backcut and leave some hinge wood to guide the tree’s fall. When cutting in dense woods, though, they might cut into the hinge from the sides before making the backcut. With a shortened hinge, the tree is free to roll off other trees and fall all the way to the ground, as in the case with the beavers.

Alfred Balch, Lyme, New Hampshire

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Role of the Beaver; Roll of the Tree

To the Editors:

The fine cover photograph of the beaver (Autumn 2009 issue) had me hoping for an enlightening and sorely needed educational article on this keystone species’s invaluable work. But I was disappointed in the article “A Logger With Four Feet and a Tail” by Bernd Heinrich, who wrote in his book, Winter World, “Without beavers this would be unbroken forest. There would be no painted or snapping turtles, no bullfrogs, greenfrogs, mallards, Canada geese, dragonflies, giant predacious water beetles, snipe, Virginia rails, willow flycatchers, yellow warblers, red-winged blackbirds, sunfish, minnows, catfish, kingfishers, great blue herons, mink or muskrats.”

Unfortunately, Heinrich’s article made little significant mention of the truly critical importance of beaver activity, which is so often being lost due to human conflict, destructive trapping, and wetland draining. I highly recommend naturalist David Carroll’s book, Swampwalker’s Journal, for further illumination of the beaver’s values.

Heinrich’s contemplative account of the felling and ultimate utilization of a single hung-up birch tree is a curiosity. Perhaps there is a lesson there about not being wasteful, though I’ve seen many unutilized, hung-up, beaver-felled trees; or maybe it has more to do with a human-altered landscape growing in smaller and thicker tangles? All I do know is that the value of beaver work is much underappreciated and worth much more effort to preserve.

If we truly care about restoring biological health to our part of the planet (clean water and recharged aquifers, healthier populations of native, cold-water, and other fish, restoration of many rarer species of animals and plants, less soil erosion, and less destruction from major floods), we must do much better at accommodating these amazing creatures and the wetland complexes they manage.

Richard Hesslein, Brownfield, Maine

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Role of the Beaver; Roll of the Tree

To the Editors:

In the Autumn 2009 article, “A Logger with Four Feet and a Tail,” author Bernd Heinrich is surprised at the apparently wasted effort by beavers chewing a tree trunk. Possibly this is to wear down their teeth that constantly grow out (in rodents, horses, and camels) just like our fingernails, which we file down. Beavers have been found dead, unable to close their mouths, from overly long incisors. Mice and rats compulsively chew anything, too.

Photo by Dave Mance III

John Petersen, Concord, New Hampshire

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Recovery through Nature

To the Editors:

Recently, since I had successful major cancer surgery, I have become aware of the therapeutic value of walking in the woods. I have been a volunteer conservationist for over 36 years and never really appreciated the deep, moving value of walking softly on my own trails and observing and identifying the many features that I passed by many times before. There is something magical and stimulating about this activity while the body and mind are in the healing process.

I was particularly moved by the article in the Winter 2008 issue, “The Nature of Healing,” by Aldebra Schroll. That article prompted me to develop a trail handout for the Town of Littleton, Massachusetts, entitled “Walking for Recovery: A Guide to Easy Off-Road Walking at Prouty Woods and Morgan Land.” I am starting to do another one that covers other conservation areas in town. As a forest steward for the New England Forestry Foundation and a local land trust trustee, the whole idea of staying involved and doing a creative activity in a healing environment is rewarding. I don’t think any of my doctors and medical specialists have mentioned the value of walking off the roads. I, for one, am not relaxed and healing while dodging speeding trucks and cars with accompanying noise and dust.

I pass these thoughts on hoping that it will help others in recovery and generate interest in the value of healing in a forest and meadow environment.

Art Lazarus, Littleton, Massachusetts

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Tell Us More

To the Editors:

Great article by Michael Snyder (“What are Indicator Plants?”) in the Autumn 2009 issue. But it was a tease! I want to know more. Could you follow up with a simple chart of common indicator plants in the northern woodlands, and what they indicate? Or provide a resource for readers to follow up on their own? Thanks!

Carolyn Haley, East Wallingford, VT

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Upping the Ante

To the Editors:

Caddis flies in the Autumn issue? I’ll see your larval case and raise you an egg mass.

Caddis fly egg mass, taken late August in Boxford, Massachusetts.
Photo by John Dick

John Dick, Salem, Massachusetts

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