Endurance And Hewing

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Physical strenght is definately a large element of Hewing. It provides control of the tool, and aspects of endurance.
If you don't have muscle -- and I certainly didn't when I first began, being, maybe 22, 5'9" and weighing in at about 115 pounds -- it can be darned hard to swind a 3-4 pound axe for most of the day, one day after the next, let alone a 12 pound Broad axe.

But muscular strength is far from the only element involved in Endurance. If you consider yourself to be in decent shape but have never taken up an axe, and you sure as heck don't jog, swim, or paddle; let's say you do some walking and a fair amount of weight lifting. The first time you pick up an axe and attempt to keep up the pace of a long time Hewer, well, you're probably going to recon you've just been deposited on Mt. Everest, and skipped the acclimation process.

It's darn hard, particularly on the heart.

• A Story I can remember the first time my partner and I hired another to help us hew. This kid seemed in decent shape, heck, I was beefy by that time, but my partner wasn't, stringy and lean, so looks wise didn't mean much to either of us, and we'd been doing this so long, as had every other Hewer we knew, that it just didn't seem like hard work anymore, and, this kid was a Tom Brown student, and an active woodsman, to boot. Boy, we just weren't prepared.
  Joe, I'll call him Joe, well, he was working with me, we were scoring a rather large, long log -- probably a 25+' Tie Beam -- using the two man scoring method. As far as I could tell we weren't going all that fast, after all, this was something brand new to him.
  At first he seemed to be doin just fine, but it didn't take long for this guy to collapse at my feet. Right like that, down he goes like a sack of potatoes, another second, he was up like a gosh darn jack in the box, and boy, didn't he keep working at it, huffing and puffing for all he was worth, every now and then he would do this "sack of potatoes" thing, lying on the ground getting his breath back in long, ragged gulps.
  Boy this just freaked my partner out, first time he saw that. Here is this kid, swinging an axe for all his worth, putting every last bit of muscle he has into it, and then dropping faster than a steer on Butchering day. But, heck, that just gave way to peals of laughter. Craig just couldn't figure out what all the huffing and puffing, falling down, and then jumping up was all about. Once he did figure it out, That "Joe" wasn't putting us on, he thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. Well, that just made "Joe" work all the harder.
  Me, I just figured things was what they were, and kept on scoring. The times Joe was lying on the ground just allowed me to try and fix some of what he did.

That was my one of my first experiences where I saw the actual importance of conditioning, and how much reliance hewing placed on good lungs, and a good heart. It was a lesson I had long since forgotten, and, maybe never known. When you are first begining something, like this, and surrounded by experienced people who think your every effort is the funniest thing they've ever seen, it's hard to look at what is happening to you, and around you, objectively. "Joe's" ordeal was more of a lesson for us, than it was for him.

I've had numerous experiences to learn this again, first hand, and not as a voyeur. It doesn't take long to fall out of Hewing form. Two, three weeks, maybe a month tops, and you'll be huffing and puffing a bit yourself. Of course, with short breaks like that, getting back into top form doesn't take long either. But after breaks of more than 4 - 6 months, and you can expect to start just about from scratch again, where you are pausing for a breath every couple of feet. It happens, often.

• A Word About Endurance and Expectations. A good, well experienced Hewer can be expected to score and hew from near sunup to near sundown, where breaks are Only demanded through sheer Hunger, and never as a result of exhaustion. This is someplace where I am Not at this particular time, but it Is someplace I once existed, for years and years at a time. This Is what you are aiming for, as a professional. Endless Endurance (Just expect to pass out around noon on your third or fourth straight day though).