Conclave Oregon State: Logging Sports
My friend Jacqueline teaches in Cal Poly’s forestry department. I mail her samples about once a year of western red cedar and other plants in the California native plant canon that are hard for her to source as far south as San Luis Obispo, for students to ID as part of a final exam. Her job is not easy, but it does have perks: going hiking for work, knowing all the plants, and — more recently — getting asked to be one of the advisors on her college’s logging sports team.
When she told me, months ago, that her team would be competing in Corvallis, Oregon, I immediately marked it on my calendar — only a five hour drive from me!
I have been doing light timber work in the forest where I grew up since I was a kid: chopping wood, hauling rounds, climbing trees to top and limb them, standing up on my dad’s shoulders to fasten lines helping a tree fall in the right direction. We also used to watch the lumberjack show at the Evergreen State Fair, and I remember wishing it was a sport.
As it turns out, it is — but as far as I can tell, only for college teams. And my tiny engineering-only college definitely didn’t have one. So I still can’t play, but I can watch as today’s forestry-focused youths live out the dream.
I’m too clean, I think as I walk into the event. I don’t have sawdust down my front or mud on my knees. Competitors are in jeans and sweatshirts. Some wear helmets. People pick up two-meter-long two-person saw blades from racks and carry them to and from the fenced competition area. College-aged clusters of people lean against the split rail at the different simultaneous events to cheer on their teammates.
I’m in time to watch several rounds of the Choker Setter competition. It’s a logging obstacle race. Contestants line up at a pair of trees, then race over one log, over a pile of three logs, down a balance beam log. They grab a steel cable log leash from the end of a final propped log, then carry it back across all the obstacles and whip the leash under the starting log and fasten it. The race is over when they tag out against the pile of three logs.
The contestants wear spiked cleats as the only real nod to sports equipment. The rest of the outfit is thick and heavy: hoodies, leather gloves, pants with no stretch. The balance beam seems to be the hard part: if they put a foot off, they have to start it over again.
The events are several at a time: this competition takes four days, even with contestants hopping from one station to another. Chainsaw motors alternate with handsaw sounds at the double buck speed-sawing event. In the woods, someone appears to be sighting with a surveyor’s compass.
The water sport portion delays until the sun comes out, since the day hasn’t yet cracked fifty degrees. There are warming fires in oil drums beside the lake. Spectators have been huddled around them all day in the cold, but a judge asks them to leave a ten foot radius: these fires are for wet competitors to get warm again. Most won’t be able to dry off right away after they get out of the freezing lake, because they’re competing in several events.
I glance down the lake to the paramedics standing in front of their ambulances. They’ve been there all day, watching events that combine time pressure, agility, and chainsaws; now they’ll be here in case of hypothermia or concussion. Is this a good sport? It’s not a wise one, but I’m still envious.
There are three water events simultaneously: limber pole, boom run, and birling (log rolling). I’m seated closest to the limber pole, a tapering debarked log braced so competitors have a slight incline to traverse as they advance over the water: as close as they can get to the thin end. The boom run is six floating logs chained end to end. A couple of competitors manage to run all the way across to the other side of the lake, though only one makes it all the way back without falling in.
I’m seated at the lake’s muddy edge. Some people have brought folding chairs, but most are just sitting on the ground like me. People whoop and holler and moan as competitors advance improbable distances on the moving obstacles and then inevitably topple and splash. It’s congenial more than competitive: undergrads wear silly costumes and mingle with the sparse crowd.
Jacqueline has been helping to proctor the dendrology event all morning, but finds me lakeside. She shows me photos on her phone: tree identification based on a branch, a couple of cones. I can tell a spruce from a cedar, but I hear the grading is harsh: no misspellings, full names only. Even the capital letters have to be right to earn points.
“They only had a couple of cones to identify, though.” She had sent her team a “cone care package” to study in advance of the event. But clearly, it was enough. When the scores are posted, her team has swept the top three spots.
The athletes, soaked through from the one on one balance sport, shiver in the growing breeze. Another hapless first-year tumbles another into the lake in the log rolling competition. Jacqueline and I grin, and cheer on the victor.
