The Unexpected Benefits of Chopping Wood, with Nicole Coenen

Outside Podcast

Wilderness, Sports

4.3 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wood chopping is objectively awful for all the obvious reasons: blisters, back aches, over-the-counter painkiller expenses. But that’s not what you remember months later, when the fruits of your labor warm you and your loved ones on a cold winter night. See, wood chopping is really an investment—both in terms of that crackling fire, but also your emotional well being. That is something Nicole Coenen knows all about. The internet’s self proclaimed “lesbian lumberjill” grew up an uncomfortable tomboy in the suburbs of Ontario, and she found both her refuge and her calling in the woods. She’s amassed a huge following from the forest that surrounds her adopted home of British Columbia, and her videos are more than just wholesome, self-effacing clips of her wood chopping skills. They’ve a living journal of a woman who was saved by trees.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the outside podcast with Paddyo.
0:12.7	I assume that you got to this interview by riding on the back of an elk.
0:18.4	That would be great.
0:19.5	No elks on the island that I live on.
0:21.9	Have you scared them away because you're just walking around the woods with an axe all the time? Is that why? Yeah, they'd be like, oh, what is she doing? It's funny because there's no predators on the island that I live on. So the deer are like top of the food chain almost. And they kind of know it. They're not skittish. And they're so curious.
0:37.6	And it's funny.
0:38.3	Like I'll be out on a property, like kind of know it. They're not skittish. And they're so curious. And it's funny.
0:38.3	Like, I'll be out on a property, like, kind of helping them with, like, chainsaw stuff or, like, clearing some trees and bush. And, like, the dears will just, like, come, like, so close up to me with a chainsaw. And they're just like, uh, what's, uh, what's you doing? That's so interesting.
0:51.9	So do you have the ability to like pet a deer on its nose?
0:56.2	It's not really the Disney princess. What's you doing? That's so interesting. So do you have the ability to like pet a deer on its nose?
0:56.0	It's not really the Disney princess kind of thing.
0:59.0	Yeah.
1:00.0	That's the Disney princess that we have all been waiting for.
1:05.0	Right? Where is that representation Disney? Come on.
1:08.0	The Lumbergill, Disney Princess.
1:10.0	Yeah, that's if you need your wood
1:12.4	chopped. Just like put some maple surf on a log, put like some flannel, and then yell oky-dokey into the
1:17.9	forest and I will be there. And you will show up. Perfect. This is great.
1:23.9	Chopping wood sucks in such a great way. That doesn't make a ton of sense, but stick with me.
1:31.3	My family has a cabin on an island in the northern woods of Wisconsin, and it's one of my favorite places on earth.
1:38.3	When I'm there, I like to pitch in by chopping wood. I clean up the deadfall from past storms, take out the chainsaw,
1:44.9	and buck up rounds. Then I grab the axe in the mall and chop up the dried rounds from years
	...

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