off the pavement / By Peter Starr

My Worst Job

In which Dan the Faller Man remembers his choker-setter days

(Feb. 28, 2008)  I met Dan DeArmond last summer on the property I hoped to subdivide and buy. My friend Dick and I were thinning trees on the entire parcel in preparation for the subdivision. We planned to improve the forest health by clearing around the largest healthiest trees, open up some areas around the homes for improved solar access and also remove dangerous trees around current and future dwellings. Dick had been felling trees for several years on his non-industrial timber property (and is a non-commercial licensed timber operator), but was not up for the difficult task of falling these dense interwoven third-growth woods. Left to ourselves we would have created a hanging tree garden.

Who do you call? Why, Tree Faller Dan, of course. (Note: He is not to be confused with Tree Climber Dan.) Dan felled the Monterey Pine that blocked Arcata City Hall’s solar array. He also laid out a 100-foot fir on my friend’s 100-foot lot without trimming the top or even crossing the property line. He’s the go-to guy for difficult trees.

Tree faller Dan DeArmond. Photo by Nels Israelson

GALLERY >

Dan cut his first tree while a student in the forestry department at HSU in 1994. He was on a break from classes and living in the infamous “Baasgaard House” in McKinleyville and needed to stay warm and keep up with his classes. So he practiced on his landlord’s windbreak. It was soon after that he had his most memorable experience.

“I had been working at the Mission lath mill in Arcata for a couple of weeks, making $7.50 an hour, which was pretty good then. But the job was bad, noisy and very repetitive.

“My roommate at the time was a timber faller and had contacts in the business, and so he offered to help me find a better job. One night really late I got this call offering me a job in the woods the next day for $10.50 an hour. It sounded exciting, so I jumped on it. I was told to show up at Elk River Park and Ride at 6 a.m. the next morning.

“I met the crummy [Note: That’s what they call the work van] and a bunch of guys milling around the parking lot, and was told we’d be going out to Elk River to cut large trees. They said I would be a choker-setter. When I was in the crummy and heading east they told me I was the fifth choker-setter hired that week, and that the other four had already been fired. And then one of them asks me if I had caulks [metal-studded work boots]. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. ‘What do you need corks for?’ And so someone else tells me that I was in luck, and digs up an old pair from somewhere in the back and offers to rent them to me for $5 per week. They had holes and they didn’t fit at all. My roommate later stuffed cardboard in them. Just like Dickens.

“So we drive up this big hill, a small mountain, and finally get to the logging site where I am immediately told by the rigging-slinger (the guy I’d be setting chokers with) to ‘go down in the hole and get to work.’ He never stopped barking orders at me. It was a very steep hillside and so I walked kind of tentatively over to the edge of the landing to look down ‘into the unit.’ I didn’t know what to expect, but immediately flashed on the movie Sometimes a Great Notion.

“I will never forget the scene. There was complete chaos below me. There were old-growth limbs and logs everywhere and bedding made from smaller trees. I go down with this Yurok guy and he says to me ‘Stick with me and you won’t get killed.’

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