Stacking wood signals summer’s end
(Originally published August 2022)
Last Saturday, I woke up with a sense of purpose.
The previous weekend, during that four-day heat wave, I had spent my afternoons lying on the cool basement floor with a frozen pot roast held to my forehead. Just a few days later, however, something changed, and my brain decided summer was over and I needed to get ready for winter.
Maybe it was when nighttime temps got down into the low 50s. Or when Field Days started. Or when the stores stocked their shelves with Halloween candy. For whatever reason, I suddenly felt compelled to stack the six cords of wood that had been lying in heaps out back since this spring.
Some people think Mark should take care of the woodpile, but I prefer to do it. He works a hard physical job, whereas my most strenuous activity during the week is adding paper to the printer. After I’ve spent a few days in front of a computer, stacking wood is exactly the kind of thing my poor sedentary body craves.
“Some people think Mark should take care of the woodpile, but I prefer to do it. He works a hard physical job, whereas my most strenuous activity during the week is adding paper to the printer.”
More than that, I enjoy it. Besides being good outdoor exercise, the repetitive, methodical nature of the work soothes the sack of ferrets that live in my brain and puts me in a state of meditative calm.
But the task was not without its hazards. Over the summer, a forest of weeds had grown in and around the logs, blocking my route, and even the view, to the future woodpile.
I was able to crush most of the tallest weeds by stepping on them, tossing logs on them, or telling them nobody liked them. And I took in stride the run-in with a four-foot stinging nettle plant, which managed to make contact with the swath of bare skin between the top of my barn boots and the bottom of my bike shorts. (Trust me: adding a bleach-spattered tank top and a pair of leather gloves really pulls this look together.)
But I had a bigger problem: a giant “None Shall Pass” burdock, six feet fall and wide, that wouldn’t surrender. Due to its size, I couldn’t just trample it. And it laughed off my insults. So I threw a log at it, thinking I could knock it over.
The burdock, rather than yielding to the incoming log, didn’t flinch. Instead, it boomeranged the projectile back at me, taking me in the shin. Howling, I retreated.
But I returned with a saw and a vengeance. Crouching to avoid the burrs, I sawed at the trunk. The burdock pounced on this opportunity and attacked me from above, grabbing me by the hair with a burr-covered branch.
A lot of thrashing and flailing ensued as I tried to escape. My struggle only gave the burrs more points of contact with my hair and clothing, and the burdock and I became clinched up like a pair of winded heavyweights.
I eventually got free and, wild-eyed and itchy, vanquished the plant, holding it up like a dragon’s head. But I had taken on a lot of burrs and sustained heavy losses to the hair on my right temple.
I didn’t get back to a state of meditative calm for another half hour.
I then returned to my process, which is to stand among the heaps of wood and toss a couple dozen logs 10 to 15 feet to the woodpile in progress, stack them and then go back and do it again.
To keep things interesting, the chickens raced back and forth—playing chicken, I suppose—in the log landing zone.
Picture a shooting gallery at a carnival, but in reverse: Instead of trying to hit moving ducks with an air rifle, I had to avoid hitting moving chickens with 10-pound chunks of airborne wood.
In all, I stacked about two cords over the weekend (and didn’t take out a single chicken). But as the days grow shorter and true fall comes around, I’ll have to balance the remaining wood stacking with my other fall to-dos. I’ll have socks to knit and apples to pick and, of course, things to do in the kitchen.
On cooler days, I might bake a loaf of bread or put on a batch of stew. I won’t, however, be serving up that pot roast anytime soon. There’s always the risk of a late heat wave, and I want to be prepared.
