Timber!: The Story of the Lumberjack World Championships

Family Affair

The Jack & Jill Saw event turned into a pain for Dennis Daun. Literally. As he strained his upper body pushing a gigantic saw back and forth on a log he also planted his feet wide and pushed with his haunches. Boing! And that was not the saw whipsawing out of his hands. That was his ample gluteus maximus twanging. Nothing like a pulled muscle that leaves you hurting when you sit down. Injuries are part of the landscape in every sport, and getting hurt is just one of the hazards of the trade in the several events that combine speed and power at the Lumberjack World Championships. It is not uncommon to see competitors icing their arms or some other portion of their bodies, which are easily strained due to the repetitive motion of chopping and sawing. It takes energy to turn wood to pulp, to transform sturdy logs into sawdust. The real-life logging profession, back when trees were harvested in great numbers for home and furniture making, and currently, too, is much more dangerous than timber sports. In the real world of logging a tree may fall on you and make you one with the forest floor. It is more likely in the woods that an ax or saw will hit a rough spot, spin out of control, and cut off a finger or hit someone nearby who is not paying attention. There is little bloodshed in timber sports competition, but it is an ever-present threat. Rarely do small cuts sidetrack entrants, if they even acknowledge them. More likely than not, muscle fatigue may interfere with top performance. It’s tiring to keep on sawing, cutting, or chopping, especially when the effort is measured against the clock. There is no time to pause, wipe one’s brow, and resume cutting at your own pace. 88 Family Affair Family Affair Certainly there are risks, but danger is not a specific byproduct of timber sports. That’s one reason why, to a surprising extent, the Lumberjack World Championships is a family affair. It is typical for an entire household to embrace certain sports if the parents are heavily engaged. The sport may be long-distance running, hiking, fishing, or playing soccer. So it does happen with frequency that one member of a family getting involved in timber sports leads to other members doing likewise, and that leads to a continuum of generational involvement. The Scheers/Hoelschers are hardly unique in sending several members of the same family to the starting line of an event. One would think participating in timber sports is a hereditary trait, even though it is learned behavior. From the time the north woods in Wisconsin was first logged in the 1830s, the job of lumberjack was pretty much a man’s profession. The lumber camps were set up for men in the remote wilds, and sleeping and showering in communal quarters was a one-sex operation. Not to mention that women were not expected to have the strength and wherewithal to hack down trees. The lumber camps were definitely a man’s domain, and society would have frowned on any respectable lady venturing into the workplace. But just as society at large has changed and men and women work side by side in many professions formerly closed to women, lumberjack competition has expanded its outlook and opened its doors to women, too. The Jack & Jill Saw is the only co-ed event at the Lumberjack World Championships. Many other events offer separate competition for men and women. Some events bring together more than one generation from the same family. Lumberjacking is no longer just a bunch of guys wearing plaid flannel shirts. It can be guys and gals wearing plaid flannel shirts— and their offspring in the same attire. Dennis and Lindsay Daun are a rare father-and-daughter sawing team from Round Lake, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Dennis’s physique has all of the makings of a lineman for the Green Bay Packers, with broad shoulders, wide bottom, thighs as big around as the logs he cuts, and calf muscles that seem bigger than baby calves. Lindsay inherited some of the same traits. She is big boned and 6 feet tall, though not at all heavyset. It appears her body contains the power of an Olympic rower, but she prefers working in wood. At the time Dennis complained of his aching rear end (“my right butt”), as he described the locus of his...