Every year thousands and thousands of apparently normal, conformable, middle-lower-upper class gentlemen abandon their couches and homes to embrace something primal, something lurking, something which uses the family wood burning stove as a cover, a blind. My father was one of these individuals, and every fall my siblings and I would scatter on weekends, lest my father awaken and secure one or more of us to be his helpers as he took chainsaw and ax to huge piles of wood around the area.
I love my father, I have so much respect for my father—and frankly I love the wood stove too. It’s warm and yellow and it makes the cat lazy and fun to mess with. But I did not enjoy wooding. Not a bit. We started early and ended late, and I had plans for those hours, plans which did not enjoy a filthy dusty borrowed pick up truck (seriously, you can’t breathe in that thing. I can feel my eyes drying just thinking about it). Dad would saw and hack away and we, the kids, would basically wander around until he was done (after an hour usually) and we could come in and pick up all the wood (about ten minutes). Then he would do it again so we had a load, and then we would ride for home where we would slowly cart the pieces to the back yard with a flat-tire wheelbarrow.
But I do understand. My dad had a lab job, which didn’t require much strength or stamina. But every fall he gets to hack and saw and watch the wood melt from under him, his muscles straining and his splitting wedge breaking the toughest knots. And every time his children sat by the fire, or he grabbed wood from outside, that was his accomplishment, his castle, his doing—the gift of wood for the stove.
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