Nostalgia to Woodcutters and Woodcutting

This morning at the gym, I used a “something saw” machine which imitates the movement of a wood-cutter manipulating a chain-saw.
Many training machines in a gym are designed after recreational activities such as rowing, skiing or rock-climbing. They are probably designed for the specific training for that sport. Meanwhile, there are also a few which imitate physical work which more people used to engage in in the past. The wood-cutting machine is one of them.

I remember a photo I saw of woodcutters from the early 20th century at the Mining Museum in Almaden in San Jose. None of them were smiling. They only stared at the camera with sober eyes which did not express any feelings. There is no reason to smile, I thought.

They probably only had a dim idea about what a photo was. There probably weren’t any people who were interested in their humdrum lives (at least they believed that) and there was no such concept as entertaining others or looking impressive to the view of others like now when millions of people act like celebrities. Those woodcutters just went out into the woods every morning, cut wood to the limit of their bodies and came back home to collapse into bed after eating a meager dinner.

Were they happy? I wondered. Some of them may have enjoyed spending days with a loving wife and children while others were completely happy being single. Some of them may have been skillful in something like woodcrafts or plumbing and made them a bit more affluent than the others. Some of them may have been able to read better than the others and may have enjoyed some literary life.

The interesting thing about that “something saw” machine is it symbolizes some contemporary people’s desire to have a similar physicality as the laborers. The machine only picks up the physical portion, their chest, their forearms and their belly out of their life. We would have been able to have better physical results by actually cutting wood, but we select rather to work on computers, because that work is physically easier and pays more.

I wonder now, how many of those woodcutters would have made it to college if they were born in today’s America, when the educational equality has vastly improved since then. I also wonder if graduating from college and working as a white collar worker would have made them any happier. If they were happy, I also wonder if they would have smiled in the photo also wondering if smiling in the photo ever expresses one’s happiness (it probably does to some extent).

There is a Thai short story in which a beautiful young woman who wins at a beauty pageant decides to come back to her hometown in a fishing village after her husband’s death. She buys a fishing boat and starts fishing. Despite the villagers’ initial whisperings that she will soon quit, she continues to engage in the fishing business while raising her kids. Her skin becomes coarse from the sea salt and her hair is blown out by the sea wind. By the end of the story she looks more beautiful than ever.