February
We made it. February. Now the year can really begin.
We made it. February. Now the year can really begin.
Poor January goes on forever, although it would remind us it is one of several months with thirty-one days, including its closest neighbor, December. The difference is that December is filled with holiday anticipation and ends with a party. January is filled with tiresome resolutions, increasing cold, mostly darkness, beginning to end.
Here is a plan. Swap January and February in the calendar. Just the number of days. December finishes with champagne, hugs, and kisses, but rather than looking ahead at thirty-one days of “No Drink January,” it will be only twenty-eight.
(Someone must have thought of this.)
It leaves us with two, thirty-one-day months back-to-back; however, these days, the time changes in early March, and even as we drag ourselves out of January the days are getting longer, and more or less warmer. We can handle thirty-one days in both February and March.
Anyway, here we are in February. I have to think about going back to work outdoors. Depending on snowfall, it is time to start harvesting firewood for next year. We have a plan to thin a patch of wood along the driveway to allow more light and give us a peek at our field as we approach. There are no particularly large trees in the designated area—everything around was farmland at one point—but there are a few with enough girth to yield a cord or two of decent logs.
Have I written you to say we have been heating with wood this year? Over the summer we put up about three and a half cords. It will not get us the full distance to April, which was the stated objective; we will have to supplement the supply in another couple of weeks from outside sources. Or burn propane. But we made it through what we hope will be the coldest months.
I was sharing our wood-heating credo with someone recently. He said, “Oh God, we did that for a few years. All I did was think about wood.” True enough. I think a lot about wood. I walk every morning with Huckleberry and while he crisscrosses the trail in front of me, I admire the standing dead trees, seasoned and ready for the stove. We are typically miles from home during our walks. None of those trees are coming with us. I merely covet them.
On our patch of land, I have taken down the standing dead timber that is not already home to various creatures and cut up most of what is burnable lying on the ground. Now, I am compelled to go after new stuff, which means balancing care of the woods with our desire for heat, sun, and sky. We think about that.
Fortunately, this harvest season should be less back-breaking because the work will take place along the driveway. I can pull the truck up to the job site. Scavenging for dead wood, as we have been doing, means fetching it from where it falls, usually in inconvenient places barely reachable by small tractor, and downhill from the splitter. We rolled a lot of heavy logs over the undulating forest floor last year to where we could load them into the little green John Deere trailer.
Yes, we think a lot about wood.
I think about thinking about wood and question what I thought of before. I can tell you: getting to the commuter train on time, beating the traffic, having enough for tolls, finding parking, the confrontations that might be ahead of me. I thought about happy and unhappy customers, how much time I had for lunch, and seeing my family at the end of the day. By comparison, thinking about wood does not seem so bad. On the other hand, people who cleared this land two hundred years ago—all day, by hand, using axes and oxen—might disagree. Rolling out of bed to catch a train might seem like a very good way to earn a living.
And then what’d you do, besides talk?
Retirement often presents us with opportunities for redemption. I am happy to be thinking about wood.
Anyway, it is snowing outside and there is a high wind advisory for the next several hours ahead of a front that is bringing sub-zero temperatures for another day, or so. The surface of the pond is smooth and white under a dust storm of snow. It was the same earlier in the week when I decided to wade into it with Huckles for our walk. He charged ahead as he always does, thrilled by nothing but running room until he disappeared into a swirling white cloud whistling around the top of our cove. He was back in an instant, ice crystals around his nose and eyes. I was so amused. Holy mackerel! describes the look on his face.
I laughed. “C’mon, ya sissy. Feel lucky I don’t hitch you to a couple of stumps that will need dragging from the woods.”