Firewood

Monday morning and I’m feeling the muscles in my back and shoulders just a bit today from splitting firewood Sunday afternoon.   Over the last two winters, we managed to burn through most of our previous stockpile a wood, a cache gathered in 2004 when we helped a family member clean up after a tornado – mostly poplar.

While Sunday was relatively cold – in the low 30’s, I still wasn’t ready to come inside and find myself in front of a computer again – any activity outside would be therapeutic for me.   The rumors of a late Monday snowfall proved a reasonable justification, so I gathered up my saw and went next door to continue harvesting a downed tree.  I cut as many sections of 12″ – 18″ diameter pieces as I could lift and would fill the back of my truck, and returned home to split them.

I was feeling pretty good about a couple of hours worth of work yesterday, but I barely made a dent in the tree – there remains easily ten or even twenty times this volume of wood – plenty of exercise potential.  Who needs a home gym?