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passages through the dead-limb walls
Monday, January 12 2026
When I have outdoor activities to perform in the winter, it's best to get started on them as early in the day as possible, since daylight is a precious commodity when the sun rises at 7:26am and sets at 4:44pm. Today I needed to take continued advantage of the lack of snow cover to salvage as much firewood as I could. With that in mind, I set out this morning (it was past 10:00am, which is later than ideal) with the big chainsaw fitted with the over-size lawn mower battery and finished processing all of the large white ash up the Chamomile a hundred feet or so above (west of) the Stick Trail. There might've been more I could've processed closer to the uprooted root mass, but that part was partially flooded by the Chamomile itself and the moist environment had made it ideal habitat for carpenter ants (which I prefer not to disturb, especially when they're in a state of deep torpor).
After that, I still had plenty of juice left in the battery, so I walked over to where a ramp-like path angles down from the top of a shoulder in the landscape down to the contour that the Gullies Trail runs along for thousands of feet. This ramp is also the Gullies Trail, but it's been blocked for months by two large trees that have fallen across it. The first of these is a red oak, and today I began bucking it into pieces starting a dozen or so feet from the root end and continuing from there. Considering that the tree is almost too thick for the 18-inch saw to cut entirely from one side, it made quick work of the cuts. (I've been using a fairly new chain blade.) Once I'd cut enough of this first tree to partially open the path, I went down to the second of the trees (which looks like it might be a sugar maple) and cut enough of a piece to partially open the path there as well, meaning I no longer have to clamber down a steep slope to get to the Gullies Trail.
Then I cut down a small (but fairly tall) skeletonized white pine and bucked it into pieces. That's ideal wood for getting fires started to putting a little life into a fire that doesn't seem to want to burn.
Later I returned with my backpack and carried two loads of white ash back home, where I split it and added it to the indoor wood rack. Then I went and retrieved those pieces of dry white pine. Later, fairly late in the afteroon, I brought back my fourth load of the day, which was more white ash. White ash has been by far the most dominant species in our heating this year, mostly because there has been a fair amount of it that has dried nicely in the forest after having been killed years ago by the emerald ash borer. But there's not much of it left and we'll soon be returning to the most common species in these xeric Catskill-foothill uplands: chestnut oak, one of the best firewood species there is.
Late in the day, I took Charlotte for another clockwise walk up the Farm Road, through the abandoned go-cart track, and then homeward north through the scrubby highlands. In that last leg of the walk, there is a path for much of the south-to-north trajectory, but when I cut back eastward, passing within view of the back of A's house, there is no trail. But I've been that way so many times that a trail has started to develop. It's been defined mostly by where I've snapped the lower dead branches from white pine trees. These branches form a weak barrier throughout much of the forest, enough to cause the casual hiker to avoid them. But I make a point of traveling as straight as I can in places and taking the time to break off these limbs so the next time will be an easier hike. And, since there is snow on the ground in places, I can see the tracks I (as well as Charlotte and the deer) have left in it.
I wanted to drink alcohol today, so I painted a picture of Charlotte, mostly using various shades of grey I mixed before applying to the canvas. Much of this work was done by the time I walked Charlotte, so I'd brought a beer with me on that hike.
For dinner tonight, I cooked a pizza using the dough I'd bought at Adam's last week. I didn't have great options for toppings, so all I used was onions, mushrooms, and cubes of sautéed tofu. I didn't have quite enough shredded faux mozzerella cheese, so I had Gretchen buy some at the store on her way home from her bookstore shift and we added a little to the pizza after it had already been baking for about fifteen minutes. The pizza turned out great, and we ate it while watching Jeopardy! and the final episode of Station Eleven. I felt manipulated by this episode, which played with my emotions by having our heroine Kirsten meet up with Jeevan, the man who'd saved her from the apocalypse, after an eighteen-year separation. I'd never really understood the role of Tyler (the cult leader) in the plot and why he'd done the things he'd done, and also why Kirsten interacted with him in the ways she did. I'd also hated all the cleverness with the timeline, which is to filmmaking what the practice of using every font available is to document layout. All of this had made me hate Station Eleven, but here I was with tears streaming down my face.
The painting of Charlotte I painted today. Click to enlarge.
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