Faliure vs. Wood Heating

I stopped by my friends farm last Sunday to borrow a skill saw. It was dripping. Everything was dripping. The earlier part of my day had been spent trying to stop a roof from leaking and literally “destroying all my precious work!”. Essentially I was feeling vulnerable to the world and a little incapable. Lucky the universe put me to work on something within my reach in the form of bucking the top of a 70’ pine.

The top had blown out in the last storm, but had been on its way out for a while now. Pines don’t do so well on our side of the cascades and therefore are kinda set up for a disaster like this. The top had come pretty close to taking out my friend Jacob’s hut/cabin, fondly referred to as “ the man shack”. But now, oh how the mighty had fallen. The top was a solid 20’-25’ feet and 16’’ at the break. and because it had been partially dead for a while, there was the possibility of some usable fire wood.

Coming from a feeling of incompetence in other things, I was almost overly enthusiastic in dealing with this task. It was that I was being unsafe, more like unseemly. When you start cutting wood, be it felling, bucking or splitting to much enthusiasm often starts to look grotesque, even ghoulish. Like a grave digger with a boom box. Keeping that in mind, I joyously sunk the bar of the saw into my first cut. The saw was an older Stihl “36.” Old enough that the new “0” hadn’t been added, making it a “360” . Really it was the perfect saw for the job, light enough to handle easily and enough muscle for me to push it. It felt like the sort of small pickup I prefer as opposed to the "Hummer" of a saw my dad uses, an Echo 66. I guess he's just getting older and needs a bigger saw?

The top was caught in the middle of a willow tree so there was a lot of cutting above my head and judging weight distribution. I wanted the weight to shift in my advantage and bring the tip down, but I didn’t want it to fucking roll out of the willow on to me. As I started,things just happened so quickly and perfectly. Within a few minuets my friends had a new stack of wood and I had renewed confidence. It felt seamless. It felt like this was what I was supposed to do. And as it always does with wood chopping, it felt like I was fulfilling an ancestral expectation of good work and survival. Nothing to make you feel better about a sense of alienation and disconnect than cutting wood. The sense of providing shelter for "my people" goes so deep in me and I feel like a dick even blogging about it.

(posted by DK, Olympia)