Eight cords of wood. One person in the household who can lift and swing an eight-pound maul. Do the math.
I love wood fires. The old farmhouse in which I live has two wood stoves - one in the living room and one in the parlour - and every day, around four o'clock, I stoke them up so that by the time the rest of the family gets home the fires are roaring, the coals underneath are glowing, and the house is suffused with that gentle, embracing warmth. The cats congregate - woodstoves with glass doors are CAT-TV. ("Oh, quick, you're missing it! Fat Log With Stump of Branch is on! And it's a new one!")
All this warmth - physical and spiritual - comes at a price, of course. The wood gets delivered in May, cut and blocked but not quartered. I let it dry over the summer, then spend a back-breaking week in September loading and stacking the seasoned wood into my woodshed, which adjoins my office. Some of the pieces are small enough to fit into the stoves without being split. But more - many more - await the axe, hatchet, and maul.
I probably spend a half hour a day splitting wood before my back protests and I have to stop. I use the maul for the bigger logs - broad, heavy, blunt, no finesse at all (the maul, of course, not me. I'm broad and heavy and blunt, but I do have a teensy bit of finesse).
Unlike a sharpened axe which slices cleanly into the wood, a maul is perfectly designed to concentrate the energy of the swing at one point and violently force the fibres apart without sticking. You don't sharpen a maul. It's not a precision tool. It's a thug, a brute. The axe is fine for smaller pieces and the hatchet for kindling. But the maul does the heavy lifting in this equation.
I take what is probably an inordinate amount of pleasure and pride in splitting wood. Those who think of it as something any dolt can do ("I mean, how complicated can it be, you're just chopping wood, for God's sake. It's not rocket science.") are right, to a point. But where some dolts might take four or five swings to split a piece of elm or beech as thick as your thigh, this dolt can do it in one.
I know exactly where to strike, my aim is true, and all my energy is focused on the task. If only those qualities were transferable to the rest of my life ...
One of my absolute favourite songs is about wood and living in a culture where firewood is important - "Raise the Dead of Wintertime" by my friend and erstwhile writing partner Allan Rankin. I sometimes sing it while I'm working.
My voice is not as good as Allan's. But the spirit and heart and joy are there. I like to believe that counts for something.
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