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showered with late birthday presents
Sunday, February 21 2016
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
This morning, I set out again on a firewood-gathering foray with my new Kobalt chainsaw. My first stop was at the large Chestnut Oak up the Chamomile from the Stick Trail. I figure if I make a couple cuts on every foray, I'll eventually have the entire tree processed into manageable chunks that I can then split. In order for the still-green wood in this tree to dry in a timely fashion, it will have to be split. And it will have to be dry before I bring it home. This means I will have to split it in the forest. (Even if water weight were not an issue, I would have to split it in the forest anyway, because a stove-length piece of the trunk is too fat to carry with my frame backpack.)
Because of the small number of cuts I'd made through that big tree, I had a plenty of power leftover for the gathering of dry firewood for immediate use. I felled a smallish Chestnut Oak further out on (and below) the Stick Trail and bucked it into pieces that later proved to be an inch or so too long. (I would have to end up cutting these in half.) Today's haul of ready-to-burn wood came to 119.15 pounds, which is a lot considering that the chainsaw I was carrying in my hands at the same time weighs 13 pounds.
My mentee surprised me by showing up in the early afternoon while I was still wearing my pajama bottoms. I hadn't gotten an email he'd sent. He and his mother were sheepish when they saw how unprepared I was, but I said it was fine and waved him in. During the course of our session, though, I started having a sinking feeling that perhaps the kid just doesn't have sufficient fire in his belly to program computers. Not everybody has the temperament for that kind of work, especially once they realize the dirty secret that it's nearly as ephemeral as a performance.
Soon after my mentee departed, Eva and Sandor came over to shower me with birthday presents: a propeller gaurd from that drone Sandor had found and given to me, a four pack of Dubhe black double IPA (it's strong), and $50 gift certificate to Adafruit.com. Despite an earlier fuckup that had filled the house with smoke, we hung out in the living room drinking beers and listening to YouTube DJ music based on a song I'd picked (Morsel's "I'm A Wreck"). When YouTube started playing what sounded like demented carnival music, I jokingly selected a spaghetti western playlist, having mentioned that as a musical selection I'd made on an earlier occasion.
Not long after Sandor and Eva left, Gretchen returned from her shift at the bookstore in Woodstock. She had a book for me: Norwegian Wood. I'd heard Terry Gross interview the book's author in a podcast we'd listened to on the drive back from Philadelphia and had been intrigued. The book sounded like a delightfully geeky deep-dive into the world of firewood gathering and use. Gretchen had actually thought about getting me Norwegian Wood earlier, but figured that I'm such a know-it-all about firewood that I would take offense. I immediately opened the book randomly somewhere near the middle and began to read. It was unexpectedly well-written and compelling, and I kept reading for a lot longer than I normally do when there are distractions such as the internet available.
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