Tornado

We were walking along a lovely forest path

when, suddenly, the trail ended! The forest was replaced by a gnarled pile of branches, rocks and mud, strewn about as if a tornado just ripped through.  It took us almost 20 minutes to pick our way through about 100m of devastation. 

After decending back to the road, what happened became "clear" 

A section of forest that used to contain the trail was clear-cut: only up close do you notice the extent of the carnage.

The trees are used for firewood. The logs are

Sorted, fed to an automatic firewood making machine

then bundled and wrapped.