During the first autumn of the pandemic, I pull on boots and gloves, buckle a lifting belt, and put on a pair of clear safety glasses. The leaves have flared full yellow, with red highlights and a few brave greens. The air feels cool but not cold, and the gray sky threatens rain, but doesn’t mean it. While my wife Amy piles the older, drier wood under the porch for the winter and sweeps the driveway, I tramp down the hill to where a tree knocked over by a storm leans awkwardly, still attached by a few fibers ten feet above the ground. I grab the bottom, or rather the top, and twist until it falls. Then I drag it up the leaf- strewn hill, through the wet green yard, and to the empty gravel bays next to the shed. I will chainsaw it later. Today is a day to clean out the woods and the yard, to gather pieces large and small for a woodstove winter.
My muscles ache from weightlifting yesterday. But we have no time to wait: long days of sawing and splitting lie ahead. We have begun to cut down the largest oak trees near the house, the ones that could smash through our roof during hurricanes or heavy snow. It pains me to cut down such magnificent creatures, but over the past month we had split the remaining healthy large rounds and rolled the logs already rotten to fashion a fence up by the road, designed to keep the rushing hill water from washing out our yard. Those tasks closed a loop open since long before the pandemic, the harvesting of several tons of tree. These trees have lit our stove for two winters now and will last at least one more.
This month of work is not for this year; it is for the following. As I tramp around the property, I am thinking far ahead. I take a close look at the dozen trees that have fallen across our stream in the past three years and know that we must clear them out. I have made a purchase I have been avoiding – a large gas-powered chainsaw – to reach and work on these logs…more than logs in some cases. Some may be too large for me to handle, and I must accept that, too.
Two days ago, I opened the chainsaw box for the first time. Following instructions carefully, I affixed the bar and chain to the motor, thinking that it seemed dangerous to have unqualified people like me putting together chainsaws like they were cheap furniture. With Amy’s help I poured gasoline into the mixing canister, then a smidge of engine oil. I shook that and used a funnel to pour it into the small gas tank. Then I poured bar and chain oil into the oil tank using a different funnel. I flipped the on switch, pulled out the choke, stepped on the handle and found that my steel-tipped boots were too big, so I had to change into old hiking boots. Then I stepped on the handle, made sure the chain brake was on, and pulled the starter.
Again, again, again. I was pulling too hard. This is not a lawnmower. I waited, repeated the process, pulled again. Nothing. The fourth time, though, the engine mumbled to life. I pushed in the choke, pushed off the chain brake, and waited. When the engine had warmed, I picked up the heavy machine and pressed the throttle and trigger on the handle. The chain zoomed with life, and I cut through the thin hardwood trunks with ease. Too easy. I told myself not to forget the power in your hands. The danger. Be careful, slow, and deliberate in all your actions. Don’t rush.
The action of using a chainsaw is not as satisfying as the swing of the maul, although it is somewhat easier on my aging back. For the past decade, I have had far more chopping days than chainsaw days and have tried to adjust my body to this strange, unequal motion. Last week I set one of the final rounds of oak on the large stump piece I had fashioned for the purpose and adjusted the weight belt that protects me from twisting too much. Twenty years ago, as a weight-lifting purist, I would never have used this artificial support – dedicated as I was to working out my abdomen, so to speak. But at nearly fifty, I am more susceptible to injury, despite stretching every single day. After chopping wood my right knee is bruised, and my elbow joints ache. Still, this kind of habit might save me from worse immobility, and makes a greater effort possible.
On chopping days, I raise the heavy maul, breathe steadily, look up at the autumn sky, and bring the maul down smoothly and quickly, eyes snapping to the place I want to strike. My knee hits the thin pad I’ve placed on the gravel and my elbows jar when the edge doesn’t smash through. I stand up, hoist the maul, breathe slowly and consciously. I look at the sky again, the sun, actually, far to the south through the forest. Then bring it down again. This time, the round of wood snaps apart, one half flying into the hillside and the other onto a pile of split logs on the side of the shed. I admire the beautiful grains of the oak as I pick up half of the round and repeat the process. Then again. I stack the pieces on the long iron bed, breathing returning slowly to normal. I check my back, which feels all right, and roll another large piece over to the stump.
Today, with different tasks in mind, I find trees and branches bent down by others and free them. I break rotten ones down to the ground. I drag small, branched trees that had fallen – beech, oak, and mountain laurel – under the porch. We can break them down further later this fall. I step carefully on the slick, wet leaves, and with the new chainsaw cut up seven fallen trees in under an hour. I drag the more robust pieces back to the house to be further broken up. The other pieces I drag out of the stream and onto ridges where they won’t fall back into the water and dam it up. Afterwards, we sweep the leaves from the driveway before a late lunch on the porch, repainted just a few months ago during the first summer of the pandemic. While munching happily on an apple, I see that a crack on the lowest step on the stairs down to the back yard has widened into a gulf. That will have to wait for another day.
That evening, as on so many chilly evenings, we decide to use the wood stove, to complete the cycle. Opening the door and the flue, I crumple up newspaper into small balls, then pack a selection of thin branches around that. One piece of laurel, no thicker than my wrist. I light it up with a long match and wait. Put on a larger piece, then an even larger one. As the temperature climbs, pull out the flue, giving less oxygen but retaining more heat. A red glowing center forms, and the temperature rises over 400 degrees. The evening’s fire is secure, and now a slow, pleasurable placing of logs on that can follow for the next five hours or so, letting it burn for the first half of the night. The blower clicks on and sends hot air into the house, moved around by the great room’s ceiling fan.
I sit and feel the heat on my aching back until it is too much. For ten years now I’ve been building fires in this woodstove, perhaps fifty times each winter. I had enjoyed fires while camping over the years but having this constant and reliable source of heat seems different, perhaps because it takes place in our home. It even may have saved our lives one winter we lost power for four days in twenty below temperatures, huddling with our cats in front of the flames, room blocked off with hanging blankets to keep in the warmth.
But it is long-term work I am thinking of, not emergencies. This work takes many months, from fallen tree to roaring fire. Following anything complex and difficult all the way through to its end – writing a book, finishing a six-month sales project, building a house – this is one of the most vital parts of life.
The woodstove lights the great room, bathing us in an orange glow. We settle in to watch television and sip our drinks, knowing that tonight, at least, we will be warm.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
