Grab Your Hot Saw and Show Them How It's Done: Alissa Wetherbee of Axe Women Loggers of Maine

I'm taking you down another one of my personal fixation rabbit holes today with the awesome Alissa Wetherbee from the Axe Women Loggers of Maine!

I was first introduced to the Axe Women Loggers of Maine when they were on the program at the Topsfield Fair, here in Massachusetts where I live most of the time. My dad has been involved with the fair forever, I grew up kicking around in the vegetable building helping to set up and break down every October, and even though my days of growing championship veggies are long behind me and my kids are only interested in the midway rides and ripoff games, I still try to get there every few years to get my fix of greasy pole climbs and fried food (and maybe a little bit of tractor pulling or demolition derby!)

Which brings me to today’s guest, Alissa Wetherbee. A few months back I saw something on Instagram that reminded me of the one time I saw the Axe Women Loggers at the Fair, so me being me, I went into web stalker mode.

Alissa’s logging sports domination came pretty organically, since she spent a lot of her childhood and teenage years cutting and processing wood for her family’s use. When she got a little bit older, instead of taking some thankless waitressing job in the summer, she parlayed her chainsaw skills into being the token girl in a local tourist trap lumberjack show. Eventually she realized that there were actual timber sports competitions that had actual  prize purses, and even though it was a lot of the same women competing in all of those competitions, there were other women - period! 

Alissa made some great friends on the circuit, and as she looked around at what some of the guys were doing in their off season, namely getting paid to demonstrate logging skills, her creative juices started flowing…

You can find more information about the Axe Women, becoming an Axe Women Pathfinder, upcoming events, all the things on the web at Axewomen.com, and you can follow them @axewomen on Instagram and Facebook as well, they share all kinds of pix from their travels and you might just be the first to know the next time Alissa has one too many shots and rolls a log down the Erie Canal or whatever...

Other fun links:

• That time the Axe Women met Queen Latifah
• That time Alissa tried to teach Peggy Keyser how to throw an axe on the 207 
• That time Alissa log-rolled the Mississippi
• What is a stock saw? 
• What is a hot saw? (And BTW Stihl, women use them too!!)
• Awesome log rolling video (in which 10 year old Libby embarrasses a grown man)
• What’s a boom runner?

And make sure to come on over to GuidesGoneWild.com to sign up to get more info on upcoming events!

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