Dennis McCann: Please, honey, let me be a man of Stihl

Originally published Nov. 19, 2008

While I have always thought of myself as a knowledgeable and wordly guy, I’ve long been secretly embarrassed at being undereducated. Credit-wise, I mean, and we can probably forget the “secretly” part now that I’ve shared my shame on the world wide Internet. While many of my friends and former colleagues have advanced degrees or law degrees or medical degrees of every sort, I left the University of Wisconsin-Madison with exactly 120 degrees on the head, not one more than the bare minimum for entering the workaday world with a college degree. And while I often thought I should do something about that I never found the right opportunity.

Well, pull my cord and call me Chipper because now I have. I was going into Hayward the other day and passed by the campus of the Wisconsin School of Chainsaw Carving – “the only state licensed chainsaw carving school in the United States.”

Is this a great country, or what? Who knew there was a school offering “in-depth chainsaw carving training to the career oriented student.” As adrift as I am employment-wise these days, a new career turning tree stumps into fierce little black bears sounds pretty good.

It turns out the school has been around for a few years. The school (http://www.chainsawcarvingschool.com/) was started by a former taxidermist-turned-chainsaw artist and offers weeklong classes several times a year. Instead of a couple of No. 2 pencils and a box of crayons students are required to show up with a chainsaw or two, steel-toed boots, chainsaw protective shirt, leg chaps, gloves, goggles and helmet – not to mention your own gas and oil and $1,850 for tuition – but nobody said education comes cheap. If I can only convince my wife to let me have an actual chainsaw I can get to work on the prerequisite 20 carved mushrooms, a photo of which must be included with each application.

That could take a lot of convincing, though. Whenever I bring up my need for a chainsaw – and I am one who lives in the woods, by the way – I always end up feeling like poor little Ralphie in “A Christmas Story.” As Ralphie’s mother feared he would shoot his eye out with a Red Ryder BB gun, my wife contends I would cut my leg, or worse, off with a chainsaw. When I say “not bloody likely,” she only hears the “likely bloody.” And she doesn’t care if I’m the laughingstock of the local tavern.

But man, look at that course schedule. After the safety instruction (See, honey?) the class gets right to work on an eagle bust design and layout, then carving an eagle out of soft material and by the end of Day 1 each student has chainsaw carved an actual eagle. By Day 2 it’s on to carving the eagle’s eye, lip, beak and feathers and, in the afternoon, chainsaw carving a standing bear.

And who would dare play hooky on Day 3 when we get to make a death mask of either a carved or frozen bear.

The day I stopped to take a photo of one of the carved bears along the highway – that’s a salmon it’s holding up, of course – I could see a group of carvers in one of the outdoor carving booths and hear the manly whine of saws turning chunks of wood into high art. It was music to my ears. I tell you, I love the sound of a Husqvarna in the morning.