You know what that means, firewood. The local heli-logging company, Columbia Helicopters (a.k.a. the Cartel) finished up their work for the season. Their sort yard, a former rock pit, is nearby so we all headed down there to do our part to "clean it up", i.e. this is an easier way to get firewood because it is already on the ground. However, its ownership is questionable because the wood is from the Forest Service, and cut by the Cartel that dumped it in the rock pit. Our town is surrounded by the Tongass National Forest (http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/tongass/ ) so basically any wood you get here is Forest service. Anyway, in the photo above, you can see that the big log Roland is leaning against has a rope tied around it. The other end is tied to Jonathan's truck. He pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and retied it and pulled some more to get it down to be cut up. He pulled until it was both close enough to the splitter and until his bumper fell off.
Then Dave bucked it into pieces long enough to fit into our woodstoves. This is the same chainsaw he used to cut our solid wood doors for the cabin. I never knew how useful this blade would become, go figure. We did maybe five or six of those logs that day. Once the logs were bucked the guys used axes to cut the circles into pieces that Connie and I could manage to get under the wood splitter that we borrowed for the day. She would operate the lever and help get the wood into place. I stayed squatted and pulled the cut pieces out of the way and reloaded it from the pieces the guys were cutting. In this picture, Connie and I got to take a break and the guys took over on the log splitter. 
You can see how big the "smaller" pieces are that the circles were cut into by the guys feet and then the final size in the back of the trucks. We cut about three months of firewood for us, for Dave, for Connie and Roland, and another couple loads for some older folks in town. It was a huge job and we were hurting and cold by the end of the day.
So we rolled out of there and about 100 yards away, the Forest Service had a "road block" set up. This was the first case of law enforcement I have seen here first hand. We don't have any police in camp, sometimes the State Troopers will come through town. I wasn't really sure of the status of the wood in the rock pit, but there is no hiding four trucks full of firewood and us covered in sawdust. We were about an hour from any kind of town in the middle of a national forest. They had barricades and sirens and a K-9 car and rakes and shovels and other implements of destruction. I was trying to remember all the verses to Alice's Restaurant and decided to tell them that I put my license and registration under that pile of firewood. It turns out they only ask for hunting licenses here. I am still trying to get used to how this place works, the rural learning curve is a steep one. In the end, they didn't even look twice at all the firewood they could hear us cutting up all afternoon 100 yards away. http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml
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