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It took six chains, a lot of sharpening, two tankfulls of gas, and over two days to get the job done. Digging away the dirt from the base of the stump gave me more room to maneuver the saw. You have to get the bar of the saw deeper than ground level— so digging is the first job. Then the more you dig, the better angle for the bar and more sawing.
Each cut went into the dense wood slowly, the chips getting finer and finer. Chainsaw professionals want big chips to fly as they cut. It tells them the chain is as sharp as can be. Fine sawdust indicated my chain had become dull again. To help widen the cuts, I drove a wedge into the first cut with a sledgehammer, and then another one into a second cut, then another, soon burying all three. I should’ ve known better than to pound them into the wood so deeply. I had to watch where my next cut would be so as not to hit the wedge. I think you can tell, it was no easy task.
I thought about this pignut hickory tree while I was sawing the stump and I became anxious. Odd that I felt that way. The tree had been dead for many years and was not doing typical tree things, like taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. It had long given up its role as an air cooler in summer and a wind deflector in winter. The limbs long gone had been places for chickadees and nuthatches to perch. That didn’ t make me feel any remorse. No, I
thought more about me and my struggle, needing to end this difficult task, getting it out of the ground in several large chunks. I thought about my saw needing a tune-up, the six dull chains that needed sharpening, and that if I didn’ t get this all done, the next days’ rain would make a sloppy mess.
I was not bothered by this tree’ s important role in nature since we have many trees— one less won’ t make that much difference. Right? And I couldn’ t even recall this particular hickory’ s amount of firewood that warmed our living room, long used up now, probably when our boys were much younger. They took turns after football practice to split and stack the wood.
But almost like a family member that grows up with you, you may not remember all their habits, traits, good or bad, but over time the memory drifts back. This tree did a lot of jobs, and even at the end— all the small limbs, twigs, and leaves returned to the soil. Even the stump helped create soil over the years it remained there. In the deepest roots, I noticed several cream-colored grubs that attracted a few chickadees. They jumped in and out of the hole when I left for a break. Another job for the hickory.
Now at this writing, the dense, old chunks from the hickory stump, scarred and dirty, are stacked by the wood stove door.“ You can call’ em all night burners,” I recall my dad saying.
And that’ s what they did as their last job. I felt a lot more gratitude for that old hickory. •
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