I’m swinging a maul. Splitting wood in the cooling bright night. It’s bright enough to work till midnight. But armies of midges, cleggs, and flying biting things will drive me indoors well before then.
My neighbour had cords of cedar, cypress and leylandii in rows to dry. Given by the good people next door. They knew he had not the time and too much trouble to fell his own. Another neighbour called over to buck them to stove length with her saw. I’m splitting them to stack in the woodshed.
In the distance the sun sets over what might be the Curlew Mountains. It’s a lazy rhythm. Pick up a block. Chop up a block. Gather up the split blocks and once more chop.
Some of it is easy. The splitting axe slides through wood that’s been built to spring apart. It’s a simple joy. The useful productivity of harnessed aggression. Others are knotty and awkward things that the axe flys to at full and angry tilt.
Sometimes I am more stubborn, and then, at other times, it’s the wood that wins.
I’m splitting cedar or cypress. Some ash that’s grown straight and slow in some cold or shaded corner. It’s rounds are dense, heavy. They shatter under the maul in clean pieces, the grubby wood opening to the clean straight lined alabaster grain of ash wood.
I’m connected here. To the woods and the wilds and the land. And to the other hands that harvested and logged this wood. Kind hands connected together by the work of caring for another. The stump I split on is a tree as old as my mother’s marriage. The far farther side of a half century. The wood comes from the next farm over from my friends, the man and woman who planted them gone now. The next generation now revolutionizing the farm. These felled trees one of the first expressions of that revolution. And an expression of friendship for a friend. Here. Be warm. Winter is long. We are with you.
As I work through the pile the sun sets. The sky is turning to purple and hammered copper over the forest and the fields as I swing.
Another neighbour sawed the now dry rows to stove length, leaving a scattered pile of stubborn rounds. Good clean sawyering. Straight edged. They sit well for the splitting.
The pile of splits gathers height around me. I am knee deep in good clean split wood. The smell of cypress resin is thick in the hot air. My maul is sticky with the stuff. I breathe deeply, my hands resinous, perfumed and rough with blisters. The copper is burnt out of the sky. Swallows spiral in the haze above. I stop to watch a drift of crows across the sky.
Work is done. I am a third of the way. Two more summer evenings. 5 more hours of work.
For a man I am quiet enough. The company of quiet fields and planted trees and the bustling hedgerows does well for me. But there is community and communing here amongst the split wood. The work of several hands in common purpose to heat a friend through his winter. He will think of the hands that fed his fire as winter comes. As will I. That is company enough. For a quiet man I hope my work and the work of friends speaks volumes to him we cut for.
