The Science of Wood Stacking

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Benefit Mind, Body, and Spirit

Uncle Will spent most winter forenoons working up next year's wood. This meant hauling logs out of the snow-filled woods with Gawd 'n' Dammit, the team of geriatric Belgian draft horses that he treated like house pets but worked hard enough that all three of them stayed trim and hard-muscled into a robust old age... He was more than content to leave the family and kids snug in a house heated with fuel he'd felled, bucked, split, and stacked with his own hands.

Few of us moderns have so tangible a reason to feel good about ourselves. This is why I prescribe a bucksaw, a maul, and set of splitting wedges along with a really big woodpile as therapy for the twitches, gout, flabby midsection, jangled nerves, or deep-seated feelings of alienation, powerlessness, inadequacy, and most other ills of modern society. A heap of fresh cordwood begging to be sawed, split, and stacked beats Valium any day.

Two final cautions. Don't lay heavy logs in a stack lest you snag a glove on a splintery edge and crush a finger. Bring them in over their place and pull your hands away briskly so they drop a short distance and land with a satisfying klunk! Never swat at a bug you uncover in a woodpile. There is a very small chance that a brown recluse spider will take up housekeeping in your wood. These smallish and unremarkable-appearing, medium-brown, hairless spiders love woodpiles. They deliver a dangerous (even occasionally fatal) bite. Fortunately they live up to their name and will scuttle for cover if exposed to light. Let them go in peace.

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