Chainsaw Love

I was working as a line-clearance tree trimmer where we trimmed and felled trees along electrical transmission lines. We used chainsaws every day. I was chatting with a foreman that mentioned the Northeast Blackout of 2003. I had never heard about it as I was living in South Korea at the time. That summer, an overloaded transmission line made contact with a tree, which could have caused a localized blackout if trees were trimmed around the lines. Instead, there was a cascading effect and by the end of the day, all the states in the northeast and parts of Canada were without power.

All of this could have been prevented with a chainsaw. One tree sent a good portion of the USA back to the Dark Ages. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the importance of the work that we were doing in the right-of-ways that crisscross the state of Wisconsin.

I deeply enjoyed speaking with many people during the course of researching this book. I had a lot of great conversations and met many people from different walks of life. Chainsaws brought us all together. Then I realized chainsaws bring a lot of people together. Chainsaws are now very widespread tools. Many people have strong opinions, interesting insights, or useful tips about chainsaws. Some have cool stories to share, some have scars to show off. There are many people out there that love and appreciate their chainsaws and I discovered I wasn’t the only one that felt that way.

Not everyone is like this. Some look at chainsaws as loud, obnoxious, ornery tools that get put into service only when necessary. I feel the same way about my lawnmower.

A major part of my research was conducting more than 60 personal interviews with current and past race officials, skiers, volunteers, and Tony Wise family members. I tried to dig deep into race history and operations to convey their stories and personal connections to the race.

In the opening chapter, I take the reader through a modern race week and race day from the skier’s perspective, describing the sights, sounds, and nonstop action during what otherwise would be a quiet time in and around Hayward. Traffic jams on a winter Saturday in rural Wisconsin? Twenty-thousand people on Main Street? Cow bells ringing? Visitors from 20 nations? It only happens during Birkie week.

A chapter called “Birkie Fever” attempts to describe why skiers, young, middle-age, and older, keep coming back for years and even decades. Also, I go behind the scenes to show how volunteers, up to 2,000 a year, many of them with their own brand of “Birkie Fever,” are a major reason why two small communities can stage such a complex event.

In some respects, the book is an homage to the legacy of Hayward native Tony Wise, what he initiated and put his heart and soul into. He didn’t create just the race but the Birkie trail and the Worldloppet organization. I felt a real responsibility to fully tell his story, where he succeeded and failed, and as a historian to then chronicle the race beyond the Tony Wise years.

Tony was such a visionary, but he gifted us his eternal optimism by creating the race. People who ski the Birkie have to be visionaries too—they have to push themselves, imagine themselves coming down Main Street, and then go out and do it. We all have a little bit of Tony Wise in us if we believe in ourselves.

I hope readers realize, if they don’t already, that the Birkie is a force, an international treasure, an extreme physical challenge, a feel-good day and explosion of color in the north woods when the days are cold, gray, and short.

If readers are familiar with the Birkebeiner, I hope that the book reaffirms their love for the race but also deepens their appreciation for its rich history. If readers aren’t Birkie skiers or are somewhat unfamiliar with the race, I hope the book reveals how special it is—a celebration of winter, of life and culture in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, of Nordic skiing. Maybe the book will inspire them to do the Birkie too.

One of my favorite race memories was from my first year, when I wasn’t sure I could actually ski 30-plus miles. Late in the race, as I was coming down a hill, it hit me that I indeed was going to make it to Hayward. It was such an intense feeling of accomplishment, of joy, of personal triumph, something that I’d never felt as an athlete. I imagine this is what many first-time Birkie finishers experience and one of the reasons it keeps them, like me, coming back.

Many Birkies stand out because the weather and snow conditions make them even more challenging. One year, skiers faced sub-zero cold at the start and only single digit high temperatures—I felt like a popsicle when I finished. One year it was in the 40s, so it was a long slog through mushy snow and then standing water on Lake Hayward. Another year a blizzard hit about a day before the race, and the soft snow on the course made for thick uphill climbs and not much glide. The battle of the Birkie is three-fold—within yourself, against the course, and versus Mother Nature.