Words from the Woods: Springboards

A springboard was not much wider than a man’s boot. But in the old woods, sometimes that was all the ground he got. The lesson started the night before. After supper, when Maggie had cleared the last bowls and the dining hall had settled into coffee, pipe smoke, and tired shoulders, the men drifted toward the fire-pit with their axes. No one announced it. No one made ceremony of it. A man simply found a stump, laid his double-bit ax across his knees, and went to work. File against steel. Stone against edge. A slow, careful scrape in the firelight. Some men kept one bit fine for clean wood. The other they left a little stouter for roots, knots, and rough work near dirt. But both edges had to be cared for. A dull ax did not only make a man tired. It made him sloppy. And sloppy had a habit of waiting until a man’s boots were off the ground. Jack Mercer sat near the edge of the firelight, turning his ax head in his hands. Sam sat across from him, working a stone along one bit with small, even strokes. The greenhorn watched from the bench near the wall, trying to decide whether silence meant peace or judgment. Maggie passed behind him with the coffee pot. “If you’re staring that hard,” she said, “you might as well learn something.” The older men smiled into their cups. The greenhorn stood too quickly and nearly caught his boot on the bench. Jack did not look up. “Easy,” he said. “We’re sharpening axes, not fleeing a bear.” That earned a low laugh from the fire. Sam held out the stone. “Come here.” The greenhorn came. Sam turned the double-bit ax so the firelight caught the edge. “Look first,” Sam said. The boy reached. “Not with your finger like you’re petting a barn cat,” Jack said. The greenhorn froze. Sam smiled faintly and showed him how to test the edge by sight and care, not by offering it skin. “It has to bite clean,” Sam said. “Tomorrow we cut springboard pockets.” The greenhorn glanced toward Jack. “Pockets?” Jack finally looked up. “The place your board trusts.” The boy frowned. Jack set the ax across his knees. “A springboard trusts the pocket. The pocket trusts the ax. The ax trusts the man who sharpened it after supper.” The fire snapped once. No one improved the sentence. By morning, the forest had taken the smoke smell from their coats and given them rain instead. The Douglas-fir rose out of the slope like a wall, its base swollen wide with root flare and old bark thick enough to turn a poor cut ugly. Moss clung to the folds. Ferns crowded the wet ground. The hill dropped away below them, soft with mud, needles, and old duff. Jack stood at the base of the tree with his double-bit ax in hand. The greenhorn looked from the trunk to the narrow plank lying in the wet brush. “That’s what we stand on?” Jack glanced at him. “No,” he said. “That’s what you learn to stand on.” Sam coughed once into his shoulder. Jack marked the pocket with his ax. “A man cuts too low on a tree like this,” Jack said, “he fights the flare, the pitch, and every twisted year this fir has been holding the hill together.” He swung. The ax bit clean. Chips flew pale against the rain-dark bark. Not hurried. Not showy. Clean. The greenhorn watched differently now. He was not only watching Jack swing. He was watching the edge from the fire-pit become a place for a man’s boot. Jack cut the pocket deep enough to take the iron-shod end of the springboard. Then he slid the board into the notch and drove it home with two hard blows. The plank jutted from the tree, narrow, wet, and unreasonable. The greenhorn stared at it. “That’s all?” “That’s plenty,” Jack said, “if it’s set right.” “And if it ain’t?” Jack stepped onto the board with one boot. The springboard held. He shifted his weight once. Then twice. The board gave one small wet creak. The greenhorn stopped breathing. Jack did not. “If it ain’t,” Jack said, “you’ll meet the ground sudden and without ceremony.” One of the older men grinned. The greenhorn did not. Jack stepped down and nodded to Sam. Sam cut the second pocket on the opposite side, his ax work quicker than it looked, each stroke falling where the last one promised it would. He seated his board, tested it with one boot, then looked across the trunk at Jack. Two boards. Two men. One tree too big to be argued with from the mud. Jack climbed onto his springboard. Sam climbed onto his. The boards flexed under their weight. Not much. Just enough to remind a man that trust was never the same thing as comfort. The greenhorn looked up at them. They were not high enough to seem safe. Only high enough to make falling honest. Jack looked down. “First rule?” The boy swallowed. “Make sure it’s set?” “Before that.” The greenhorn frowned. Sam rested one hand against the bark, patient. Jack tapped the board with his boot. “Know where your feet are.” The greenhorn nodded. Jack lifted the misery-whip handle. Sam took the far end. The long saw hung between them, steel teeth waiting against wet bark. “Second rule,” Jack said. The boy thought harder this time. “Don’t look down?” Sam smiled faintly. Jack shook his head. “Look down enough to know you’re not lying to yourself.” The older men laughed under their breath. Jack’s face did not change. “Then look at the cut.” The misery-whip began to move. Slow at first. Pull. Breathe. Let go. Pull. Breathe. Let go. The saw rasped into the fir, and sawdust fell in damp curls. Jack stood steady on his board. Sam matched him from the other side. Their boots held. Their hands worked. The boards held because the pockets held. The pockets held because the night had prepared the ax for clean work. The greenhorn looked from the saw to the boards and back again. “It don’t seem like much,” he said. Jack did not stop pulling. “It ain’t.” Sam gave the saw back. Jack drew it clean. “It’s just enough.” The greenhorn looked at the narrow planks jutting from the giant fir. Just enough ground. Just enough trust. Just enough height to do the work right. In Timberline, that was often all a man got. Please follow our next episode of ‘Words of the Woods’ below: Corks — the boots that keep a man standing. If Timberline has given you a good seat by the fire, would you mind helping another reader find the trail? Share this publication with someone who loves historical fiction, old woods, faithful friendships, stubborn hope, and stories where the Mountain keeps count. A good fire carries farther when someone helps the smoke rise. 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