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One of the first “Outdoors” columns I wrote for the Cook County News Herald two years ago found me splitting wood in the late winter as the snow receded. It was, then, my favorite time of year to split; nice to attack stacks of rounds, split them by hand, move them by toboggan, and stack them for firewood.
It’s mid-January now, and we are back to a column mentioning wood splitting. I was thinking that this – deep winter – is truly my favorite time of year to split. At 0° this morning, and drafty in the shack, what better way to keep warm? Many layers of clothes, the outer of which I eventually take off. Uncovering stacks of rounds under powdery snow drifts. Frozen rounds that cleave apart. Dragging the toboggan of firewood from the near woods to the half-empty sheds with their southern exposure.
I’m into some massive old rounds from two granddaddy aspens I felled a couple years ago. The rounds are 16 inches deep (the width of my woodstove and length of my chainsaw bar), 24 inches across, and 80 to 100 pounds. The weight depends on their dryness and solidness. Toward the base of the trees the logs hollow out and they were filled with dry rot or squirrels’ nests. I like these hollowed-out rounds. They split easily, like cutting into a Bundt cake. The solid rounds up the trunk a little are tougher, still solid, dense. It takes maul on maul to reduce these.
I remembered last summer or so, we were at my old man’s cabin, and he had some scrub oak – red oak or black oak – chain sawed up and we went at it with his dull maul and sledge. I had him set them up for me – they were solid but not heavy – because I had a little swagger about my axe abilities. We were moving through it all at a good clip, then he puts up this Y-shaped piece, a crook in the trunk, on its base, on the block, and the Y was really wide, and I said, “That don’t split.”
And he said, “Why not?”
And I said, “You can’t split that.”
And he said, “Try it. It’ll go.” So, I tried, and swung super hard, and – thud! – the splitting maul bounced up. Not even a dent.
“Let me try,” he said.
“You’re never gonna split that.”
So, Jiminy Christmas, the first thing he does is to take the Y log off the chopping block and put it on the ground.
“You can’t split on the ground,” I said. So, he goes into this whole thing about how he always splits on the ground. When he was a kid made to split firewood for Jim or George or Cliff or Elmer – all these old guys in our family – he always split on the ground.
So, he takes the damn dull maul, and he’s got this Y log on the ground, and he gets into this goofy unathletic stance, and swings, and boom! – thump – thump. Lays ‘em down, as they say.
So, I was put in my place. Brought back down to earth, as they say.
But I did work the wheelbarrow better, and my stacked wood was much neater, so, as they say, I got that going for me.
John Locke said, “Don’t ever tell me what I can’t do.” That’s not John Locke the English philosopher. That’s John Locke, from “Lost.” From T. V. The middle-aged paraplegic who flew to Australia to go on a ‘walkabout’ while confined to a wheelchair. He was born in 1959, and when he was born the Buddy Holly song “Everyday” was playing on the record player. “Everyday it’s a-gettin’ closer, goin’ faster than a roller coaster…”
That’s fiction. “Lost,” I mean. “Everyday” was fact.
“Everyone said go ahead and ask her…”
But I told myself – and others – what I can’t do. Don’t listen.
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