I look around me and feel calm and a growing anticipation. My heart is racing now, but the beat is steady and sure. A new force is about to enter this peaceful place and I am a willing participant. My eyes focus on the dismembered limb and I soak up the diminishing moments of calm before the storm.
With fingers firmly around the toggle I jerk my hand into the air. A cough. I can’t stop it now. I pull the cord again as instinct alone drives me. I can’t stop now. I pull again and a roar rises from my feet into the air and out across the paddock. I can’t stop. I give a couple of “warm up” revs and a sly glance around the paddock. This is my world.
Primitive, destructive drives are partially tethered by goggles, earmuffs and a need for the end result to resemble firewood. I warm up the chainsaw a few more times and begin on the smaller branches. Like a hot knife through butter the chain glides through two-inch-thick leafy branches which fall away from the main objective.
As I proceed up the branch to the thicker end a thought circles in my mind. I cut length after length negotiating the natural contours of the branch and the thought continues. The branch becomes unrecognisable as a pile of short, leafless pieces take its place on the ground and the thought won’t leave me. “Two logs, twelve inches long and square at the ends.” Just two, please!
I put the chainsaw back in the shed and pick up the splitter. Splitting wood has a romantic, old world value. Fire as a source of heating is, by and large, a choice rather than a necessity today. Turning on a heater at the wall or setting the thermostat on the central heating unit is certainly an easier option. But nothing can replace the weight of the axe head and the feel of a worn handle.
It is a meditative activity of repetitive blows with the sound of the splitting logs resonating through the soul; a man at work providing warmth for his family with each strike of the axe. Or so I can imagine. The scene I’m playing seems to be a tragedy rather than a romance. Choosing the angle at which the log best balances (just two square logs?) and where to aim creates large pauses between blows and the sound of an axe-head deflecting off the side of the log and driving full force into the dirt doesn’t resonate anywhere.
With part of a pile split, and a few logs left for next time, I begin the stack. My Swiss heritage requires of me an orderly and necessarily grand firewood stack. What would the neighbours think if I produced a wood stack that wasn’t flush and obviously abundant? There is, of course, the rustic Aussie heap. A pioneer/old time/bushman-type affair. No. The Swiss in me demands organised and straight. I think I’ll start mine around the back of the shed.
As I sit on the porch removing splinters from the blisters in my hands, I notice something. There’s a stillness in the paddock, for now.
