Forestry Work in Retro Glamour

By Marie Müller

Supervisor: Dr. Gesa Lüdecke

On one of my recent walks through the forest in my home state of Thuringia, I noticed them: The huge aisles that a harvester had left behind during an operation. For a width of at least four metres there was nothing left, only small saplings that had been knocked down and deep furrows in the ground. It is well known how harvesters and other heavy forestry machines not only devastate the soil superficially, but also destroy micro-organisms such as fungal cultures through their weight and compact the soil irreparably for decades. Accordingly, a question popped up in my mind: Is there no other way to transport wood out of the forest?

During research I came across Klement Noll, who works in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps with his cold-blooded horses to move wood. He does nothing other than heavy forestry machines: he transports tree trunks out of forest areas so that they can be sawn and transported away. However, he doesn't need large aisles for this. He and his horses can work in small spaces without damaging the ground deeply. For Noll, however, it is not only the ecological aspect of his work that is important, but also the special relationship that he builds up with his horses through it.

I wanted to explore this relationship and make it tangible. So in mid-December I went to the woods with Noll and his horse Parodi. I tried to observe their relationship while moving wood. I did so within the framework of Human-Animal-Studies (HAS). In order to record the interaction between Noll and Parodi I decided to make a short documentary film. In the sense of the HAS, it was important to me not to intervene in the process myself and not to attribute actor stasis or action processes by commenting or explaining to the audience what exactly it is they see. Instead, the images should speak for themselves, supplemented off-screen by Klement Noll's descriptions.

Never before have I experienced humans and animals working together so closely to fulfil a given task. For me, it was touching to see how Noll and Parodi communicated and responded to each other and, in a way, met at eye level. Noll said it himself: He and Parodi are "dependent on each other." I hope the film has succeeded in depicting the interspecies relationship between the two in the joint process of logging. It is available to be watched in German here.