Quiet Trail Clearing

Written by Dan Dueweke & Photos by Jennifer Uehlein Reynolds

Spring Issue '24 - Online Shop

Northern Michigan is blessed with miles of hiking trails to explore from season to season. Day hikers and backpackers alike walk on trails seeking solitude or adventure around the next bend. Most days that I hike, I wear the hat of a local conservancy or land trust, volunteering my time as a trail adopter. My intention is to make only footprints and leave only wood chips as I go about clearing fallen trees from the trails with quiet but capable tools from the 19^th century. Bucking up deadfalls with hand tools may seem slow in an age of chainsaws, but I enjoy the challenge, and my sawyer kit is much lighter. I also avoid the chainsaw’s cacophony of combustion, preferring a quiet wood. Although my walkabout tools remain the same, the ones I use will change seasonally as I go about my year on the trail.

Spring

It’s early spring, a time for clearing dead trees blown over by winter storms, many of which have “seasoned on the stem,” and are dry and as hard as Paul Bunyan’s axe handle. These are trees I prefer to saw and not chop, taking advantage of my crosscut saw’s design which is intended for dry and frozen wood. Many sawyers name their saws, but the one I carry is unchristened, though a good name would be “Grandma” given all the big teeth it has.

Today’s goal is to conduct a “logout” on a section of the North Country Trail near Mancelona. I know there will be trees down and I’ve teamed up with Jennifer, another trail adopter, to help pull the big saw. We have worked these woods before and I am confident of her skills as a sawyer and not someone who “rides the saw” (an old logger term given to a sawyer who makes their partner do more of the work). Having a second sawyer along also lets us split up the tools.

Walking in from the trailhead at Pinney Bridge, we notice the Jordan River running high from spring snowmelt. We pass the remains of a very large stump, grey and burn scarred, all that remains of an old growth pine that was felled more than a century ago. We carry the same tools that would’ve felled and bucked up that tree in 1890—functional antiques that will soon “sing” in another log. Up ahead we find it, a large maple uprooted and directly across the trail blocking the way. 

We give it a size up, first looking overhead for any loose limbs that could fall on us while we work. I unsheathe the saw and look at its shiny blade. A faint etching tells me it’s a Simonds Crescent Ground saw made in Montreal Canada during a time when quality mattered. I attach the handles and pass one end over to Jen. She pulls the saw toward her and the first hint of a “song” vibrates out of the cut—a sound common in the pre-chainsaw days but seldom heard in the 21^st century. Though nearly 20 inches in diameter, the maple is green and will saw quickly. Soon the saw is singing with each stroke while chips and little ribbon-like shavings that old sawyers called “noodles” are pouring out of the cut. 

We’ve done this many times before and our rhythm keeps the saw in motion with a minimum of physical effort—we let the saw do the work. The first cut is timed at a minute and forty-seven seconds. Not our fastest, but we’re in no hurry and there will be others before we’re through. We angle our cuts just a little and the severed piece rolls off the trail.

We walk on and by day’s end, we’ve covered about five miles, cleared perhaps a dozen trees, and seen no other hikers. Typical for this time of year. 

Summer and the Promised Land (trust)

In trail adopter heaven the saws are always sharp, it never rains, and the trail begins and ends at a brew pub. Well, it’s summer and today I’m three for three. I begin my hike at Bier’s Inwood Brewery just north of Atwood where the trail is accessed from a mowed path next to their biergarten. It winds for several miles through Little Traverse Conservancy’s Hoffman Preserve, first passing through an old fruit orchard where apples and pears ripen in the sun, then bears west through a mature hardwood forest skirting an open meadow. Knowing this woodlot, I have left the big saw home and brought only an axe, though it’s not really fair of me to say only, as it’s a tool that’s been around for millennia. 

I come upon a fallen basswood in-line with the path which means I’ll have to remove the whole tree, not just a single trail width section. The tree was live a week ago, the wood soft and green. If my axe could smile, it would be doing so now. The crown is a tangle of branches and each swing slices through the smaller limbs, barely slowing down, and I have to remember to keep a tight grip on the axe handle. 

Sectioning up the trunk, I feel the axe head sink deep with each swing—a sensation called “traveling.” I finish the cuts and head for Inwood Creek. I hear it before I see it and the surrounding stand of cedars block the sun and cool the clear water. It is damp here and a bit boggy but a boardwalk has been built over the muddiest places and I keep my feet dry. Finding no more work to do, I sit by the creek a while and watch the water flowing slowly toward Lake Michigan, then return to the biergarten where a cold draft awaits me. I take my pint outside and from a hilltop bench look west across the mouth of Grand Traverse Bay to the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula. Blue sky, blue water, warm summer sun.

After the Leaves Fall

It's mid-November now, but not quite opening day of deer season. Last night’s gale off the big lake has most certainly dropped some trees on the North Country Trail and we will be going after them on another trip to the Jordan Valley. A larger group hike is planned for today but our crew will be leaving the trailhead early, clearing blowdowns as we go and hoping to stay ahead of the following hikers. 

We begin at the Jordan River Fish Hatchery and plan to do a seven-mile segment of the Valley’s loop trail. We bring an axe, crosscut saw, folding saw, and a couple plastic wedges—divvying them up among the crew. The predicted rain and cloudiness never arrives and the day is glorious. The absence of canopy lets morning sun pour through the trees and sparkle the frost on the multi-colored leaves carpeting the forest floor. We stop at the overlook on Deadman’s Hill, a place named for a young sawyer who was killed during Michigan’s logging boom. We reflect on the tools he would’ve used to fell the mighty pines and how our tool kit is not much different than his would’ve been, though our saw, like the trees we’ll encounter, is shorter but perhaps sharper.

Eventually the other hikers catch up with us, including many who’d never seen a crosscut saw in action. I take the opportunity for an impromptu history lesson about lumberjacks, shanty boys, and tools of the logging era. A few try their hand at bucking logs with me then hike on. Seven miles later we’ve cleared about 20 blowdowns and left the trail in better shape for the coming snowshoe season.

Snowbound in the Workshop

My winter is reserved for snowshoeing and saw filing, a near-forgotten skill that few have mastered. I’m about to touch up the teeth on Grandma when I get a message. Hikers have reported a large tree blocking a section of Jordan Valley Pathway. Hmmm, a chance to combine a winter hike with a blowdown run. The tree is at chest level, too high to climb over and too low to comfortably duck under. The trunk stretches a good 40 feet and sags in the middle, indicating a serious top bind that would pinch my saw if cut from above, so this tree will be sawed mostly from the underside. I take a few top strokes and feel the saw starting to bind. I pull it out of the cut and sink my axe deep into the trunk with the handle below but aligned with my top cut. I will use the handle to support the saw and its flex to put upward pressure on my cut. 

Almost immediately the tree begins to pop and crackle as the saw cuts the tensioned underside fibers. The release cut is violent as the heavy end drops hard to the ground, but I’m standing on the safe side of the tree and keep my fingers and toes. 

Back in my workshop I resume the filing session. I’ve been careful to keep my saw out of the dirt but repeated use has dulled its teeth and silenced some of its song. I clamp a seven-foot vise to my workbench, lock down the blade, and begin the sharpening process. I run a jointing tool over the saw which returns each tooth to the same length, then place the saw on a flat anvil and hammer a little “set” or bend into each tooth to keep the saw from binding in the cut. I file each tooth to a sharp point and finish by wiping a fine coat of oil on the blade, then place the saw in a rack where it will rest until next spring when we repeat the cycle of clearing trail with a saw that sings. 

BIO

Dan Dueweke and Jennifer Uehlein Reynolds are trail adopters with the Little Traverse Conservancy and the North Country Trail Association. Dan’s interest in axes and crosscut saws began in the 1990s when he volunteered as a wilderness trail maintainer in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park. Along the way he learned to file saws and has a small business reconditioning crosscuts for the US Forest Service and various trail crews throughout the US. He is a crosscut saw and axe instructor for the USFS and has trained and certified many of their sawyers. Dan has also worked at Hartwick Pines State Park in Grayling, Michigan, where he gave lectures on the tools and techniques employed by Michigan lumberjacks during the logging era and demonstrated their use.

Jennifer Uehlein Reynolds is an avid hiker and paddler who takes her camera wherever she goes. After teaching high school for nearly 30 years, Jennifer is enjoying retirement working with Camp Daggett in Petoskey, Michigan, to offer wilderness adventures for teens, and also plans backpacking trips for adults. 

Spring Issue '24 - Online Shop