As everyone who reads this blog and/or who knows us already understands, I am a huge fan of my wife. It is as it should be. She is the greatest and, employing some sort of weird angel-like magic, getting greater every day. I am very lucky. Yesterday – though not an extraordinary day – reminded me of that in an amusing-to-me kind of way.

I cut the logs for hauling up the hill in 10-12 foot lengths and that weigh no more than 500 pounds each (estimated). Hemlock weighs the most (when wet) and Cedar the least so the lengths have to vary a bit. I aim for 400-500 pounds per log because ol’ Sal only weighs about 120-125 pounds. It is all muscle and sex appeal but it just doesn’t add up to much heft. And her heft to the log’s weight has to be in the right ratio. The block and taykle gives her (theoretically) a four to one advantage so her weight is just enough to lift the log.

Most times the weights are balanced or, sometimes by mistake (mine), in the logs favour. That is where the fun begins. Sal will pull and pull and the log will slowly lift. Part of it is still on the ground or in the water and so, by pulling it up by one end, she gets an added weight advantage. In the initial pulls only. And she needs all the help she can get.

Yesterday we were doing the logs for the first time this year and I guess my estimating was not ‘dialed in’ as accurately as it should have been. She started with a particularly heavy Hemlock. My guess: about 3% heavier than she can pull.

After pulling in the slack on the rope I could see the rope tightening and the choked end of the log lifting a bit. I usually watch from on high to make sure things work out. And I watched as the log lifted higher. The higher it went, the more weight was transferred to the lifting rope and taykle. At one point, before the log was raised high enough to clear the entanglements on the hill, it seemed that a ‘stand-off’ had been reached. Sally was pulling with all she had and the log was not budging.

When that happens, Sal gets pretty stubborn. She is going to lift that log, she is the one in control , she knows that she is the Bull o’the Woods!

God help anyone or any log that won’t do as it is told!

She takes as high a reach on the rope as she can and then lifts her entire weight off the ground. The log moves upwards slightly. Not releasing the rope at all, she begins to bounce the log and herself to some sort of jolly jumper rhythm and, with each log bounce up, she tries bouncing herself down. This little bit of applied mechanical physics adds another five pounds or so to her weight and the log moves up and up a couple of inches at a time.

She keeps up this Church-bell-ringer-style strategy while she and the log slowly rotate on the the spot. Sometimes she is hanging just a foot off the ground and sometimes, after a half-rotation, she is hanging five or six feet off the ground. Swinging with a 500 pound log pressed into her face, she is suspended by a rope and holding her entire weight in her hands and arms.

This whole process is all done on an inclined slope, as I said before. With a bit more bouncing she can sometimes rotate back to solid ground.

When the log is as high as she can get it, she has to get to her feet again (slipping slowly down the rope sometimes) and then ‘tie off’ the end of the pull-rope to somewhere on the log so that it stays in place.

Like an experienced ‘whistle-punk’ she wraps the excess rope, ties it to the log and then, wildly circling her arm over her head to indicate that I should start the ‘wind-up’, she moves to safety.

I am grinning from ear to ear as I start the winch.