The journey of a Timbers victory log, from sapling to celebration

By Bill Oram
Oregon Live
July 3, 2024
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US West

Most of these trees have important but anonymous futures: Within the day, they will be felled by heavy machinery and later loaded onto trucks that will carry them to a nearby mill where they will become boards and beams. The bones of infrastructure. …But this particular tree, carefully identified, has a different destiny. Siegfried will cut this one by hand and saw off a 12-foot cylinder that will avoid the mill. Risseeuw will place it on a trailer and take it into the city for its very specific form of arboreal acclaim. And the next time the Portland Timbers score a goal, it will be this log that Timber Joey — a certified forest product in his own right, a man who grew up in the tiny Oregon timber town of Wren — will cut into with a 36-inch STIHL chainsaw, sending thousands of fans into delirium.

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