The gnashing, snarling teeth of the chainsaw claw their way into the meat of the tree. A back cut releases the tendons and separates the once cohesive ligaments. A fore cut severs the spine. The woodsman steps back and to the right, away from the giant maple. A tenuous calm in the Vermont forest is broken by the sound of crackling fibres. It is the climax of Husquavarna's final symphony. "Timber. Timber!", shouts the woodsman. He is alone in the forest. The words slip past the taste of gas, oil and shaved maple that lay on his lips. His words fall on the deaf ears of the lumbering titans of the forest. A raven paints the blue ocean overhead with darkness.

As the unlucky partner in a deadly duel, the maple staggers forward, halts, spins around and fires a hopeless shot into the air, and falls to the ground. Its branches, like the flailing arms of a stumbling giant, break under their own weight. The legs give one last convulsive heave to the right, kicking up a spray of dirt and pinning the woodsman and his chainsaw underneath. An axe, perfection in wood and steel, laying six feet away, looks on with a cold, bemused stare.

Worlds away, Solange Poirier walks barefoot across her salt stained lawn to where her clothesline perches precipitously close to the edge of a modest cliff. Below, the ocean caresses the red rocks gently. The warm wind sings softly through the clothesline pulley. Solange drapes a sodden plaid workshirt over the naked clothesline. It is this workshirt that will give her husband, a fisherman, comfort as he farms the dangerous steel-blue ocean. From a woven basket she clutches two wooden clothespins. Between her calloused thumb and index finger she squeezes a weather worn clothespin, it's jaws now agape, allowing it to bite down on the unwitting workshirt. She repeats her actions with the other clothespin. Solange continues until a rainbow of colourful laundry sashays across the horizon. The shirt, pinned at the shoulders, is at the mercy of the heavenly elements until Solange returns.

Clothespins, little more than splinters to the mighty maple, toil silently. On the clothesline they resemble skinny birds, lined up as though singing the same note on a sagging musical bar. But they weren't singing. On closer inspection their scissored tails shot skyward while their lowered beaks were firmly clenched on their quarry. They were birds of prey. They held on with patient fervour, while their lunch flapped lifelessly in the breeze. Meanwhile a hundred thousand clothespins pinned a man to a hillside in Vermont.

The clothespin is Bonnie to the clothesline that is Clyde. Guilty by association. Municipal by-laws forbid clotheslines in many urban centres. In a world of political correctness gone mad, no one wants to see anyone's clean laundry, they only want it aired if it's dirty. The hardworking men and women of the forest no longer pin their hopes on a thriving clothespin trade. The last manufacturer of American clothespins, the National Clothespin Company of Montpelier Vermont, closed its doors in 2002. And while the lowly American clothespin edges toward outright extinction, the dryers of North America spin happily, powered by a seemingly endless supply of electrical energy. The Maytag repairman sleeps no more, he now wipes his sweaty brow with hundred dollar bills.

The clothespin. Invented in 1853 in Vermont by David M.Smith. Two perfectly mirrored wooden wafers and a steel spring. Simplicity in the purest sense. Wood and metal. Perfectly efficient like a rifle, shovel, arrow, pick, hammer or the axe that lay just out of reach from the woodsman. The clothespin. Aggressive. From the side it resembles a see-saw, with a malevolent fat kid invisibly tilting the balance in his favour, leaving his playground friend dangling helplessly. Only with a helping hand can the balance be shifted. It is a crocodile lying in wait. It is a pterodactyl, hideously beautiful. It is a hungry pike patrolling the shallows. It is a bird of prey. Standing on end it is a toy soldier. It is a man with a hole in his heart.

Perhaps the clothespin is not the hawk to the hare. The clothespin is the climber, on the edge of the precipice, desperately clamping down on the fabric of his climbing partner's shirt, saving him from a life threatening slip and unwilling to let go at any cost. The clothespin is the outstretched arm saving the drowning man from the abyss. It is the parent holding a child's hand while crossing the street. It is an enduring handshake between suspicious bedfellows.

Hours later Solange Poirier returns to retrieve her dried laundry in the warm evening light. She whistles happily with the dying wind. In Vermont the woodsman is found by his wife and freed. His bloodied and soiled pants, along with the rest of his work clothes, are washed that evening and hung out to dry early the next morning. The scene is one of first light, bathed in syrupy hues and tasting of milky rural splendour. The clothespins do not look down and grin as wooden ones might. They have no eyes. They are shaped like elongated peanut shells and made of plastic in far away China. Their array of bright neons contrasting with the earthy brown work clothes and the verdant Vermont hillside.