Feedback on wood cutting
(Page 2 of 3)
And then, and then comes the real boner. The
fellow in the two drawings is cutting some nice wood. But
if he'd let the darn trees grow up, he'd have ten times as
much to burn. Maybe he was clearing land. That's a waste .
. . just how much acreage does he need to live on? If those
trunks in the rack are oak or maple or any good hardwood,
they're maybe 15 years old. He should have let them be for
his middle age. And if they're locust or a scrub tree,
that's a lot of good fenceposts going up in smoke.
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It all boils down to this: Most firewood I've cut is
timber, not saplings. The tree is anywhere from 18 inches
to three feet across, and it isn't possible to move the
fellow . . . you have to cut him in pieces right there, so
that you can then put a splitting wedge to 'im. And which
is easier: to drag a pile of 20foot poles out of the woods,
or to load your cut and split wood on a sledge, say "Hei'a"
and let the horses (or tractor) haul it out over the road?
Now I come to an essential point: The whole notion of doing
the job by the pole contraption in the article is alien to
the fact of what you , as a person, are doing. If
we decide to cut wood, certain rules must apply to the game
. . . and the first is that it should be a game:
something enjoyable which we do by choice, not by
necessity. Yes, it is necessary to get the wood
in, but why not do the job when we choose to (rather than
when the house is at 40° and the woodshed empty)? If
the act itself is worth doing, then it's worth doing
enjoyably. Cutting wood is no more of a drudgery than
weeding the garden, and I don't think I have to launch into
a Rodale essay on the joy of gardening to make that point.
Cutting wood, after all, is the best excuse to get out in
the woods without violating our Puritan ethic (we have a
right to be there, remember?). We mingle with the
forest, we move over it, culling and pruning and being at
one with it. This isn't a very heavy trip . . . any dirt
farmer does the same, except that he doesn't usually wax
poetic about the job.
