Milling the Wood for Oars
When I first dreamed up the Building Resilience expedition, I pictured myself rowing down the Mississippi with a boat I built, a plan I (mostly) understood, and oars. So naturally, I decided the oars needed to be crafted from a local Southern Oregon hardwood. Madrone. Beautiful. Strong. A little stubborn. Basically the tree version of the project itself.
So off I went into the hills with my friend Jess armed with an idea, enthusiasm, and absolutely zero lumberjacking credentials. Madrone doesn’t exactly fall into neat planks on command, which meant we had to figure out how to transform a beautiful log into actual oar-worthy boards. Enter: the chainsaw mill.
I learned two things:
Chainsaw milling is fun.
The University of YouTube is wonderful for helping people who have no idea what they’re doing.
With YouTube professors guiding us, Jess and I managed to mill three genuine, honest-to-goodness boards. These will eventually be laminated and carved into the oars that will carry me to the Gulf of Mexico. They are currently sitting in my garage like trophies from a quest I wasn’t high enough level to take on but somehow survived anyway.
Oddly enough, this oar-making process might actually be more complicated than building the entire boat… which feels backwards, but at this point, I’ve learned not to question the rules of this adventure.
And really, that’s resilience in action. Trying new things. Picking up unfamiliar tools. Laughing at your mistakes. Learning as you go. And discovering that sometimes the hardest part of an enormous journey is just being willing to start even though you don’t know exactly what you are doing.