It’s a wonder to consider how many cuts we’ve made. Hundreds. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands? And a good arborist makes good, clean cuts. Like a flow chart, with a good cut comes good work positioning and comfort; control and poise; mastery and tradecraft; ultimately, respect and success. At one time, I was under the impression that in the cut was everything. The pruning cut. The final removal cut. Really though, everything always happens between cuts, if you think about it.

Let’s be gloomy and address the first statement from the crowd,”well what about an accidental injury from a handsaw or a chainsaw, that happens during the process of cutting, right!?”

Technically, in a situation involving kickback, the cut is never finished. So until it is, you’re between cuts. And most handsaw accidents come on the follow-through, so again, the cut has been made and you are in between them again. Like baseball, you have to break it down situationally.

Communication, too, can be a constant thing between cuts, like dugout chatter, not during the swing, but in an artistic way just before and after the action. Constant chatter is good for the spirits of the team and is a great way to keep everyones head in the game. Good communication can be a verbal tradition that we should hold in high regard. A tradition that continues through the generations.

Sometimes we are on the last rung of an orchard ladder, reaching to our outer-most extremity, rotator cuffs tearing, to make just the perfect clip, sometimes scraping away sod from a girdling root like a sculptor would fine tune a cheek or an eyebrow, sometimes we are dancing along a long, lower limb, leaning hard into the prussic to get there. To the cut. Always heading towards another cut.

Lunch. Pulling up a polesaw. Frustratingly dropping a handsaw. Calling for a tagline. Begging for some water. Thowlining. Speedlining. Cabling and Bracing. Wound tracing? Air spading. Critical root zone excapading. A tight splice, a crane pic that’s nice, a sold job at the end of a long summer night.

A good cut is like a dead space in my memory. A blank spot, of which none I can quite remember fully. Only the full throttle of the saw, or the last fiber of lignin sliced with the Gomtaro, or a pause…then the thud of the stub hitting the ground.

In fact, most of the arboriculture I can soulfully account for happens in between the cuts. Which kind of seems ironic, don’t’cha think?