My allergies work me up early this morning. It was easier to get up than stay in bed sniffling and sneezing.
Also, we got our first delivery of wood last night and I was on fire to move last year’s wood into the woodshed so I could stack this year’s wood as it comes. We get it delivered a cord at a time and I don’t like it to pile up.
I didn’t get all the old wood moved, but I got a good start.
I’ve come to really enjoy stacking wood. I have a running story that goes through my head when I do. There’s no plot or narrative, just moments in a woman’s life who lives alone on a small farm. Unlike me, she keeps to herself and doesn’t fret over her decisions. There are things about her that I admire and some things that I find sad. Often I put her in situations that I’ve had to deal with to see what she’ll do.
She’s always braver than I am and more detached.
I guess this running story is a way of contemplating my own life, and it also gives my mind something to do as I stack the wood.
After taking the video in my studio this afternoon, the pile of firewood outside my window still taunted me.
So when I finished designing my Emily Dickinson, Secrets quilt and packing up the last of my I Am Enough posters, (UPS delivered the mailing tubes today), taking a walk in the woods with Fate and eating dinner, I was back outside tossing the last to the wood into the woodshed and stacking it.
I got most of it done, but it got too dark and I was too tired to finish. But I did have some insights stacking these two cords of wood.
One of them is something Jon wrote about on his blog tonight.
It’s about my desire to do my part on the farm because I don’t make as much money as Jon does and how Jon often feels like he can’t do as much of the physical work. We talk about how we each couldn’t live here without the other. And that really, we’re a perfect match for living this kind of life together. Each doing what the other can’t.
But still somehow we each also always feel as if we’re not doing enough.
Another thing that happens when I stack wood is it brings up memories of my old life, of the hard physical work I used to do restoring old houses with my ex-husband. At that point in my life, stacking wood was a chore that became a burden.
But as those memories came to me this time, I recognized them and let them go, as I learned to do when meditating. And then I wondered if I hadn’t finally come to the point where I stacked enough wood to work all the memories out, like sweating the poison out of my body.
And I thought this because I began to notice that instead of memories, new thoughts were coming to me. And then, just recognition of what I was doing. Noticing how my body felt as I bent over to pick up the wood and how my left hand couldn’t grasp the large heavy pieces like my right hand could.
And each time I came out of the woodshed back to the pile of wood I looked at the sky or felt the breeze or really saw just how green the grass is. I was experiencing what was around me and my place in it.
I was being in the moment.
I also felt the satisfaction of filling up the woodshed with wood. Of knowing that when the winter comes, I’ll be bringing the same wood into the house and burning it in the stoves, warming our old house in a way that the baseboards can’t.
Even thought I’m not cutting the wood and hauling it to the house, or paying for it to be done, stacking it makes me feel more connected to the process. Acknowledging the sacrifice of the trees and being even more grateful for them.
The woodshed is attached to the house, which makes getting the wood in the winter easy. I especially enjoy building the ends so they’re strong enough and straight enough to hold the stacks of wood.
I’m grateful to have Nicholes help stacking our 6 cords of wood. Nichole also watches our animals when we go away, helps us move heavy furniture, and is a Vet Tech at Cambridge Valley Vets where were bring the dogs and cats.
But tonight, I was glad there was still a pile of wood that Nichole didn’t get to.
Tonight I wanted to stack wood. I needed to move my body, to sweat, be outside.
I filled the woodshed as it grew dark and when it became too hard to see anymore, I stopped.
I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, but sometimes the simplicity of repetitive, physical work, is just what I need.
Fate sits by the pasture gate as I toss wood into the woodshed. She must know by now, I think, that we’re not going to the sheep.
But it’s her place. If Fate is in the back yard I always know where she is.
By the time I tossed the last of the wood inside the shed, it was too dark for me to stack it. But at least, when Gregg drops off the next cord, he’ll be able to dump it right in the doorway. That way I won’t have to throw it as far.
I always think of Nichole, when I toss wood.
A couple of years ago, before I got into doing the wood by myself, she helped with the stacking. The first time I saw her throw the wood from the pile into the shed, I thought it was genius.
I used to walk into the shed with two pieces of wood at a time. I don’t know why I never thought to throw it, then stack it once it was inside. It’s quicker and easier.
One day Nichole showed me the old photos of all the wood she helped her father stack when she was a kid. He cut firewood for a living. It seemed to go on for miles.
I have room for two more rows in the shed and I’ll fill in the space between the rows leaving enough room to open the door that leads into the house. I’ll stack two more rows of wood outside the shed and that will be enough to get us through next winter.
For the first time in a couple of years the branches from the Maple that fell are no longer in a pile on the hill in the barnyard.
I burned most of them in my Birthday Bonfire. The few that are left I’ll use in our Spring Equinox bonfire.
Now there are only a few small sticks were the tree limbs used to lay. In the past I would have been in a hurry to clear the branches from the barnyard. But I’m learning patience when it come to getting things done.
I could spend all day every day fixing and cleaning things up around the house and farm.
But then, of course, I’d never get my work done. And I need to work, not only because it’s how I earn a living, but when I don’t create I’m not fulfilled or happy in my life.
So I choose to let some things lay where they are for days, weeks, months and even years at a time.
Cutting and stacking those branches when they first fell would have been a lot of work. Over the past couple of years, the sheep and donkeys ate all the bark off of them. They are so dry they easily snapped in two and burned hot on the fire.
Now when I look at the paint peeling on the farm house, the dried mud from our boots on the kitchen floor, the cracked glass in the old windows, I bristle for a moment then walk away. I leave it for another hour, another day.
Walking in the same woods regularly and noticing the changes that occur from one day to the next has gotten me used to the idea of things not staying the same. I hardly expect it anymore although I’m still often thrown off for a while when it happens.
In the woods, those changes that come with a strong wind, heavy snow, lots of rain or none at all, are quickly incorporated into their surroundings. Water fills the impression made by the upturned tree roots and soon insects and frogs live there. The leaves on fallen trees still sprout bringing the sky to the ground.
And in time, with patience, death always brings new life.
Am I procrastinating or waiting for the right moment? Maybe I have just learned to trust my own instincts to know when something needs to be done and when it can wait.
What is left of the wood in the woodshed. There’s least a cord outside the shed too.
Our firewood, like the hay in the barn, is taking up less space than it did at the end of the summer. Both were stacked in neat piles, security that we have food for the sheep and donkeys and enough wood to keep us warm through the winter.
As I watch both of them dwindle each time I feed the animals or load up another cart full of wood to bring in the house, I remind myself that it’s March. The days are longer and warmer, even this weekend’s snow is melting to mud. We’re not using as much wood even as we did last month.
Still, I count the bales of hay in the barn. Because the grass stayed green longer this fall, I expect it to start growing earlier. But it may not. We have enough hay to get us through April. That should be just right.
Soon I’ll be stacking the leftover wood that’s outside the shed, into it. It will be well-seasoned for next winter and the first I use in the fall.
This endless ritual of stacking and unstacking only stops for a couple of months halfway through the summer. But it’s really a continuous cycle with a lull, one that I can depend on like doing laundry or washing dishes.
Although I prefer hay and wood to laundry and dishes.
“Come look at my new way of stacking wood in the shed,” I said to Jon. I’ll admit it I was excited. I figured out how to stack the wood in a quicker easier way, just by having the piles go north to south instead of east to west.
“So it took you three years to figure this out,” Jon joked. I smiled.
A few days ago Jon wrote about being flexible, about being about to change his mind and not getting stuck in one way of thinking.
I’ve been trying to change my mind about the way I think about some things for years. I’m getting closer with some and still working on others.
It was getting dark as I tossed the logs from the pile of firewood into the woodshed. I have a running story about a woman similar to me,(but not me) and how she lives her life and handles her problems (which are also often mine). This is the only time I image this story.
There’s something about the repetition and physical movement of stacking wood I find good for thinking.
It was in this story yesterday that I got the idea that if trauma lives in our bodies, then good things must live there too.
I know that when I’m having a panic attack, I can eventually think rationally, but my body is still feeling the physical effects of panic which makes it hard for me to believe that I really am okay.
As I bent over and picked up a log then straightened and tossed it I could feel my heart pulsing, my breath catching up to my movements, my muscles pumping.
My whole body was in motion, inside and out. Breath, blood, sweat, releasing and replenishing.
It seemed the perfect time to inject my body with good thoughts. To let them course through my system, filling up my cells, with the rest of the healthy chemicals my body was producing.
I had a good thought to go with each log picked up, tossed, and eventually stacked. Making good of the wood, and of myself at the same time.
I stacked my good thought along with the wood until it got too dark to see.
I don’t know how many cords of wood it will take for me to change the way my body thinks. I don’t even know if it’s possible at all. But I like the idea and the way it feels. So I’ll keep at it. We still have two more cords on the way this summer.
And there’s always next summer and the ones after that.
We had two more cords of firewood dropped off this evening. I’ll let it dry a few days before I start stacking it in the woodshed.
After dinner is my favorite stacking time. By then the sun is low and on the other side of the house leaving the wood in shade. I like to be outside to see the sky change colors with the fading light and hear the birds sing their end-of-day song.
I began my day by stacking wood and ended it by restacking some of the fabric in my studio. Folding fabric is easier, but stacking wood is more satisfying.
Overcast and breezy, it was cool enough this afternoon to stack wood. My quilt waited on my ironing board all sewn together, just needing to be tacked. But I was so close to being done stacking the last of the firewood.
Just an hour I told myself. If I’m not done by then, I’ll stop.
But I knew I was lying, I was close enough to be done, I wasn’t going to stop till the last log was on the pile.
It actually took about an hour and a half to get it all done. It looks a little wobbly on the right side, but I’m not worried about it falling, I think I tied it in pretty well.
Now all I have to do is clean up the small scraps of wood we’ll use as kindling and throw a tarp over the top of it.
