A harmony of chainsaws

Mkay
So
Im back from the felling

And man

It was nice i guess

None of the DnD crew is in my class except for trygg, so the DnD was at the back of my mind for the whole time.
And i guess me trygg and ingrid are forming kind of a trio of friends, or we did over the trip anyway.

So yea
The first day, we all piled in the van and threw all our crap in the wood trailer thing.
Wahts cool is that the site where we actually get the timber from is only like five miles away.
Its this farmer dude's property, and he has a secrion of old forest, and he wants to clear it to make muney.
So its kinna a little fucked up coz its like
Historic forest, but hes deforesting it regardless, so if it isnt us cutting it down, somebody else is, in which case its turned into like
Normal furniture
But US at the FOLKEHØSKOLE know how to turn the wood into cool boats
So i guess thats the logoc we follow
Works for me i spose

But yea

So we drove to this shooting range (made a quick stop at the chainsaw shop to get spare parts for the "mutersag" i think is the norsk) stopped in the parking lot, grabbed our personal packs and loaded up with some common use equipment, and walked up a steep ass hill to the a surprisingly marshy mountain side.

We chilled for a bit and the kenneth taught us how to fell trees and lemme tell ya sommn-
The way you fell trees for boat buildimg is like
30 times harder than just cutting for timber like i did at paul smiths.

ALSO, its actually kind of impossible to fell trees in this way in the US, because the comdition of the actual forest floor will not permit it.

Mkay
So when your building a boat, you gotta make it strong obviously
And to make something strong you gotta work with the grain of the wood
Now i still dont understand norsk, i donno EXACTLY what its for, but these longboats have this certain piece thats bent-
I think it might be for prows and sterns-
And in order to make this strong enough for the boat structure to hold, you need a root attached to the trunk so that you can use the trunk/root transition in the bent part of your boat, so there is no joinery required in the bend, and the junction is extremely strong, because the root hasta hold up like
A 2000 pound tree

SO
when you cut these things down, you hafta dig down to the roots

The reason this is EVEN POSSIBLE up here in scandanavia is coz the forest floor is like a foot or a foot n a half of marshy moss layer. (theres blueberries fucking EVERYWHERE, great for snack breaks, we all looked pretty hilarious- buncha viking loggers walking around with chainsaws and blue lips and fingertips; it gets on your clothes too)

Yea so in the US our forests have like
The hard dirt or pine needle packed ground
Well
For new england i guess

Yea but since it was marshy i remembered my boots sucked pretty quick
I mean
Same thing i said earlier- its nice to not hafta pour water out my shoe, but they provide NO water resistance whatsoever, sooooooo....
Yea
I think next time we ho out imma take my new boots even though im not very confident in THEIR water resistance either.

Yea so basically we sawed some shit down, and i was scared of the chaisaws for a bit, but then i got used to m

I felled two trees
And debranched one and a half with a chainsaw
I was sharing equipment with ingrid and lois
For the most part i was with will and ingrid tho, with lars helping the three of us

Ingrid ate so many blueberries

Uhmmmmm

OYEA

A TREE ALMOST FELL ON ME

So
Mkay
Will and lars where cutting one down
And im standing next to them, down a small hill like
Idnonno ten feet away (oyea these types of forests are UNFORGIVINGLY hilly, like with little cliffs n valleys and semi visible pits and micro caves and misleading mossbeads that are actually flowing creeks)
But yea
So the three of us are all facing the same way, im digging to the roots of the one im working on and will n lars are almost through the one their cutting
We expect it to fall FORWARD, away from us.
But yea so lars and will pause, their like
Stuck
Trying to reevaluate theur approach with the saw, while i continue to dig
And i had this feeling, just from standing under that tree at the bottom of that hill
I was like "hm that really looks like it COULD fall on me, but i trust lars"
So i was already kinna ready for it
But yea, im diggin and im diggin n then alla sudden
Lars is just like
"GABE MOVE OUT OF THE WAY GO BACK"
N i was thinkn "lol i totes called it"
So i just dropped the diggn tool and booked it like thirty feet back
Amd good thing

The tree landed exactly where i was standing

Lars was like "well that was unexpected"

But yea i made it fine

It was kinna cool, really

Its a good way to know what your doing is REAL yknow?
O shit, you coulda almost died, but your okay

Lol

But yea so there was a lot of cutting
And some wet feet
And a buncha blueberry eating
And some nice views of the farmalnd below

O shit also there was like a million ticks (frlott i norsk, i donno how its ACTUALLY spelled tho, and you say it fast enough that it just sounds like "flot")
I was surprised i didnt know ticks liked marshland
Ticks here are way smaller
Just
Fuckn
Devilish

I didnt have many, but i did get some
Checked myself thrice over in the shower today

I guess lymes disease is less common here

O i also found out that lard had lymes diseas AND it came with bels polsy AND menangitis, just like me

It sounds like his spinal tap was worse tho

There was this other bug there too

They callm tree wasps

I think that thwir real similar to parasitic wasps, like the ones in the US, except they look scarier coz they look like
Just big huge wasps like thumb sized
Theyre real docile tho
They buzz really loud when they fly, and they land on you
I got one on my shoulder, kenneth got one on his wrist

But yea after all the cutting we went up the mountain soem more to our camp which i guess some guys made while the rest of us cut more

It was a nice camp site

I threw my small knife into a tree succesfully at least 40 times, once on a streak of like 12 in a row
It was cool

It wasnt that far away tho only like ten or twelve feet

I did this cool thing with my BIG knife too
There was this old stump, yknow with its flat surface up

Like a table

So i took my big knife and i was making it do double flips and sticking it into the stump
It was cool coz the rotational landing was opposite the dirwction of travel so it was kinna like
A knife Gainer (a gainer is where you do a back flip but move forward)
I only made that stick like twice tho
Trygg saw both times so it counted lol

But yea then we ate camp food ontop of a fjord and stayed up around the fire and had conversations in norsk

Well i listend to them anyway

They talked about norwegian cinema coz i heard names like nicolas cage and liam neeson and paul walker

And then we talked about how GMOs are illegal here, and how the US is crazy
The US being lawless and insane comes up a lot

And then Thomas told this story about how he got a TEENY tick under his foreskin
And he was supwr drunk
And didnt know what to do
And all the people he was drunk with where really interested

It was funny

And i think soon after that i went to my tent and crashed

The next day

I woulda taken more pics but my fone was dead by then

We did more cutting, and we did a lotta hauling of logs

The morning was alright

The weather was okay, my shit dry, so i packed it easy

We walked down, kenneth showed us how to haul, and we got into hauling teams with ropes and pulled some shit out while some other people felled some more

It started raining at like
Lunchtime
And it SUCKED
coz it was a MARSH
and it has all these invisible moss covered creeks so youll be walkn n then alla sudden *SQWELCH* your whole foot is in muddy gross mountain water, except instead of just a little bit dripping into my boot its like
10 oz
Instantly soaking my wool sawcks :'''''''''''''''''''(

I was okay tho

The work keeps ya WARM
And lemme tell ya
Haulimg 450-750 pound logs across "UNFORGIVINGLY hilly, like with little cliffs n valleys and semi visible pits and micro caves and misleading mossbeads" is a lotta fuckn work.
N then you do it for 8 hours
In the rain
With non waterproof boots
In a marsh

Theres a point where you just dont even give a FUCK though
Like
I was wearing JEANS
the worst thing to wear in the rain
My legs and feet wear soaked
Like id been in a pool yo

But its just like
Who cares?

Lol

So you keep pulling your logs
And you pull your rope

And you stumble over Tryggs feet,
And crush your OWN foot under a log
And you step in an invisible creek
And you put your hand straight into a glob of sap
And you slip on the wet moss
And you get squished behind the rope
And you get gutted by a protruding stick
And you get sawdust all down your shirt

And it is so
Fuckn
Fun

In a really strange way
Like
Its not fun when you do it,
But you know that nothingll come of your current discomfort
And you know you have a job to do
So you do it
And then your in the van next to shirtless, smelly, punk-suspers-wearing, freshly arm tattoed (he got it like monday its actually a dope tat he designed it himself) lois, and your like
Damn

We all got wet

We pulled some shit

We hurt ourselves

We cut some shit

We got some ticks

N we aight

So yea we pulled all day and the sky eventually cleared up
We just pulled the logs to the top of the entering path, so we didnt actually hafta take them anywhere, but the furthest pull was maybe 300-350 feet across the same treacherous terrain.

We had som downtime now and again
Kenneth likes to encourage thw slow pace work, he knows its hard

So i found this one felled tree (the top half that we DONT use, we only take the root and about 3-4 meters of the trunk) bridging a PARTICULARLY large mini valley, with, by then, quite a formidible hidden creek, this was after the rain.
Passivley, i dexided to cross it like a slackline, and i did.
Like twenty times.
And i got sort of a contest going, a contest of which i remain the best. ;)
Anyway, the point is that now me and Thomas wanna make/acquire a REAL slackline just for the school campus, and complete its image as an American white people college campus
(Fucking Will rashed my life for that joke "actually its not a college" like-
Hhhhh okay dude i fucking know- technically the whole "white people" joke doesnt even apply here its fucking norway fucking everybody is fucking white, you dont hafta tell me my goddam joke is invalid FUCK")

But yea
We finay came down the hill to the parking lot
And dropped off our crap
And pulled a few more trees to an accesible location on the path, these last few at the bottom of the hill.
One of the ones we got from here was so huge we hadda get the whole class to pull it, even WITH the cool pulley system.

But yea

The last thing was kenneth gave us a little mini lesson on trees
Im norsk of course

Amd im happy coz he made a joke IN NORWEGIAN and i got it
There was this branch sticking out the side of a tree pointing up and he was like
(In english)
"So what is this?"
(N then in norwegian)
"Trecok?"
N everybody laffed, coz it means tree dick
So
Arguably its not that hard of a trandlation to make
But it was nice lol

And tbh it really did look like a tree dick

Hhhhhhhhh
But yea
Then we drove home and left all the logs for the landowner to pull out with his tractor problyyyyyyyy tomorrow

We got back just in time for dinner

And when i got to my dorm i found all the fuckn chocolate in my bed lol

If you follow my snapchat or instagram youll see a pic of it

Its like
Fuckn
32 huge ass candy bars that frederic and magnis left in my bed
It was funny coz gard beought me to my room, n was like
"Hey gabe i gotchi sommn"
N i found the two Urges (soda) at my pillow
N he was like
"Yea ya see anything else?"
N so that made me suspicious
N i pulled my covers back and BOOM

32 CANDY BARS

and these things are
Fuckin
Huge

Like

Maybe twice or even THREE TIMES
As big as those king size hersheys
Its like
One pound per bar
Im not even shitting you

But yea they actually gotm all for free
Ysee there was this little micro lesson on DUMPSTER DIVING earlier in the week, and so frederic snd magnus went and did it
I guess its TECHNICALLY not legal, but as long as you go late at night no one cares
And they found like
A two full crated of these raisin and hazelnut "melksjokolade"'s (just means milk chocolate)
All of the bars perfectly wrapped and a whole year before expiry

Apparwntly they dont kike this flavor, but they took a crate back anyway just to fuck with me coz they new i wasnt here

Its pretty fuckn funny

But yea i give out more than just OUR candy now, now im a chocolate guy too

Its like a whole years supply so yea

Ill put a snap up for how big these things are

Actually speaking of candy, i need more mccreas BAD
What very little i have left is all weather-affected and sticks to the cello

After all that we played some DnD

Not a particularly memorable session

Well actually i tried to escape being tied to a post usig my new hook hand but got such a bad roll my hook fell off lol
N then we got saved by dwarves
And we ysed the bew figurines, ao theres this group of dwarves and their captain is avtually from the zweiguy set, so its all these shott dwarves and this guy marketed as a human-
The story gard made for him though is he actually IS a dwarf, he just HAPPENS to be really tall, and the dwarfs follow him into battle because of that
so lol
A dwarf taller than me
EXCEPT
i talked to him in a quiet moment, and it turns out, hes actually NOT a dwarf-
Hes a defecting imperialist-
The royal empire is colonizing this island, which happens to be tha home of a huge dwarf civilization, so the dwarved fight back
Now this guy "the great collosus" decides he hates the empire, and joins the dwarves
Normally they wouldnt letm in coz dwarves are like that, except the empire created this brainwashing mist to assist their takeover, ao "the great collosus" is using the mist to keep them beleivikg hes a dwarf.
The funny thing about the mist is that its heavy, so it rolls like dry ice, and dwarves, being shorter, are effected sooner coz their mouths and noses are closer.

But yea thats the jist of DnD today

And uhhhhhh
That may be all i think

Yea