Rebuilding a Relationship

The last rays of winter sun illuminate a golden plume of sawdust before a gust redirects the cloud into a tangle of wiry mahogany hair. In spite of the chill, beads of sweat well in the crevices of the chainsaw operator’s crinkled eyes. The saw whines again in falsetto, releasing another fan of dust as Isaiah Branch-Boyle methodically guides the machine in an even plane over rough timber.

The process of felling, limbing, bucking, milling, and ultimately ripping standing timber into usable lumber takes him several detail-oriented hours, complicated by the fact that fuel for the saw must be skied or snowmobiled more than six miles up an impassable winter road. The ground is covered in thigh-deep faceted snow, and daylight is at a premium; efficiency matters. But if the small cabin a few feet from the milling site has engrained in Branch-Boyle anything deeper than splinters and blisters, it’s that the approach matters as much as the outcome. Each tree he uses