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a record firewood salvage
Friday, December 26 2025
This morning while Gretchen and I were hanging out with the dogs in front of the woodstove, she was monitoring another story playing out at JFK airport. Our friend Gilaud (Dina's husband) has flown in from Tel Aviv this morning on an El Al flight with the family dog, the last component of their relocation back from Isræl to the United States. (Objectively, both countries seem to be striving to fail, but arguably the failure is darker and can come on more quickly in Isræl.) While Dina had been able to fly into Dulles near her new home in suburban DC, the dog had had to fly into JFK due to various rules about rabies. The United States doesn't trust Isræli rabies vaccines, and its post-DOGE TSA is short-staffed in such a way that suspect dogs can only arrive in certain airports. Gretchen had been so supportive of Dina's move back to the United States that she volunteered to drive Gilaud and the dog from JFK to Maryland. She'd even agreed to pick up their kid Lev from some place on Long Island and bring him too. Things were moving so fast this morning that Gretchen decided to leave a little earlier than expected, leaving me and the dogs to fend for ourselves for the next couple days.
It was brutally cold this morning, with temperatures down in the teens. So when I took Charlotte for her morning walk, it was a fairly brief walk down the Stick Trail and then cutting over early to the Chamomile Headwaters Trail.
I had a feeling that I needed to bring home and process that firewood I'd cut up yesterday, and what ended up lighting a fire under me about it was Gretchen sending me a message saying that we were expected to get an inch of snow this afternoon. I definitely didn't want all that wood to get lost under the snow, where dealing with it would be much more difficult. So I dedicated the next several hours to hiking all the wood back home, splitting it up, and stacking it up on the wood rack in the living room. I ended up bringing home five backpack loads, which I augmented by carrying some pieces in my arms (sometimes along with the backpack or sometimes by themselves). The amount of wood brought home today ended up being the equivalent of seven or eight backpack loads, which is probably some sort of record. Not only did i carry it back, but I split it into reasonable-sized pieces and eventually brought it in. I also cut up a smallish dead white ash that had recently fallen across the upper part of the Woodshed Path itself. All of this wood eventually came inside, nearly filling the indoor woodrack completely.
At some point I took a break in this to drive to Uptown, mostly to get bananas and orange juice, the latter of which I would need as a mixer. I also went by the Walgreens to get another 96 count box of 30 mg pseudoephedrine, though the first time I went there, it was still closed for lunch.
Then I drove out of my way out to the Tibetan Center thrift store to see if they had anything I wanted. They had a lot of dehumidfiers, which I noted in case I want to install one or more of them in either our basement hallway or the cabin's basement (where they would be a good use of surplus summer solar electricity). I also briefly considered buying some sort of vintage-looking erector set made of bolts and sheet metal components.
Back home in Hurley, I finished up the firewood gathering for the day and then took a nice hot bath. Ultimately I went to bed early under the effects of diphenhydramine.
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