Wood

At one point in my life manual labour was my metier. It's been a long time since that was the case. Today, my brother and I sawed and split and hauled and tossed firewood all afternoon. My dad bought a new Stihl chainsaw, a nice light 14" unit. Which my brother used. It was the first time he's wielded a chainsaw since he nearly removed his eyeball with my dad's old Murray White. We got the MW out and after much tinkering on my father's part, got it running. I used it on a few logs, but I'm really not much into chainsawing (there wasn't so much wood that we needed two saws on the go to get it done) and did most of the hauling instead, loading and unloading wheelbarrowloads of rounds. There's still a pile of bigger rounds waiting to be split... I'd write a poem about it, but Geoffrey Cook has already written the definitive log-splitting poem, so I don't need to bother. And it's true: At the edge of the chopping, there really aren't any secrets. Just a lot of swearing.

I'm a wreck and tomorrow it'll be worse. Stay tuned for more typical CLM fare. I'm going into Charlottetown tomorrow and hope to snag a wireless connection, whereupon I'll try uploading those audio files from Fredericton again. No promises, but I'll give it a whirl.