Winter Wonder-site

The final round of filming has begun!

For the uninitiated, a film about logging in Wisconsin is impossible summer-only. Logging historically occurred only in the winter. The snow was necessary to allow huge logs to be dragged via horses singly to loading areas, then pulled in large stacks on logging sleighs. They even poured water on the paths so that it would freeze and create a slicker skidding surface. 

​Freezing temperatures were necessary for moving the logs, but it wasn't the most comfortable working environment. The cook that served the midday meal to the lumberjacks would dish up the food hot, but by the time the men brought it to their mouths, it was frozen. Care had to be taken to avoid frostbite, and warm clothing was essential.

So the frozen Wisconsin tundra is why we have waited to finish filming. But where to do the actual logging? In 1910 they were cutting virgin forests of white pine. Finding a location that had trees that hadn't been logged recently proved difficult. Since 1910 growth has happened, but typically the trees have been felled and replanted, sometimes multiple times, since then. After months of searching, we contacted Eau Claire County Parks and Forest and were given permission to film on county land and even cut down several trees. The white pine you see here would have been scrub in 1910, and thus left uncut by loggers, and has since grown to towering 100-year-old growth.

Led by a Wisconsin hands-on-historian who routinely logs the old-fashioned way, our cast will use restored vintage tools--crosscut saws!--to fell some of this beautiful timber. We will capture on film what it was like for the lumberjack of 1910 to work this cold and hard, yet majestic landscape. Timber!