Standing on the 14-inch log, her stance wide, Sara Hutchins focuses on the large V penciled on the wood between her feet. The official counts down. At the word “Go!” Hutchins brings the ax above her head and swings it in a fluid, downward arc. Blade meets wood. Chips begin to fly. In 38.85 seconds, it’s all over.
Hutchins has been competing in this event, called the underhand (or horizontal) chop, for the past four years as a member of Colby College’s Woodsmen Team. The collegiate club enables undergraduates to compete against other college teams at fall and spring meets, or conclaves, throughout the Northeast. It’s not for the faint of heart.
The underhand chop requires well-honed precision, as competitors must hew through an area mere inches from their feet, while hunching over and pivoting their hips left then right to hack out the V on one side before turning around to do the opposite side. Chain mail socks or aluminum shin and foot guards (think Tin Woodsman) are often worn to prevent injuries, and axes are stayed only when the log is completely severed, forcing the competitor to hop to the ground.
Hutchins, who double-majored in art history and studio art at Colby—a small liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine—is unperturbed by the risks. And, after spending two summers on AMC’s Maine Woods trail crew cutting ski and hiking trails, she says she also feels quite comfortable wielding a chain saw, as she does in the stock saw event following the underhand chop. Hutchins is competing in the STIHL Timbersports Northeast Collegiate Challenge, which is held in conjunction with the 62nd Annual Woodsmen Weekend at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. STIHL, a chain saw manufacturer, began its collegiate series—five regional challenges held throughout the country—in 2003. More than 50 colleges and universities compete in the series.
Dressed in hunter-orange chaps lined with cut-resistant material, her brown hair tucked behind a backward baseball cap pinioned by orange earmuffs, Hutchins rotates each arm in wide sweeping circles to loosen up before placing her hands on the 16-inch diameter white pine log. The chain saw sits idling by her feet until the official’s call starts the heat. In 16.53 seconds, Hutchins has picked up the machine, revved it, and made two cuts (one downward and one upward), creating a “cookie” of wood, no thicker than 4 inches, that falls to the ground. She is faster than the eight other women she is competing against.
Hutchins and the rest of Colby’s co-ed woodsmen team have spent two days at this annual spring meet going up against nearly 200 other competitors from 10 Northeastern colleges. These young lumberjacks and jills have traded iPods, cell phones, and computers for axes, cross-cut saws, and chains. They have portaged and paddled canoes, thrown pulpwood into piles, and rolled behemoth logs with peaveys, the same type of long-handled hookand-spike tool that loggers used more than 100 years ago.
And they appear to be doing it in greater numbers than before. Over the past half decade, members of college woodsmen teams will tell you, there’s been an uptick in interest in a sport that may seem arcane and outmoded, not to mention dangerous. Many of the students picking up the axes are similar to Hutchins. They are psychology, history, and business majors with no prior exposure to logging, and they train right alongside those who do major in forestry or have backgrounds in chopping and cutting. In an age when the digital divide creates chasms between generations and makes virtual playgrounds more popular than actual ones, these college students are choosing outdoor skills long since abandoned by modern, large-scale logging operations—and they are relishing the physical challenge, the camaraderie, and the chance to spend time outdoors. Not unlike, perhaps, their predecessors a century ago.
