Devil in the Woodpile

22 October 10, Boise

Yesterday I went to collect firewood. There hasn't been much doing for work around here and it felt good to have a solid task at hand and to be in charge of it, to be able to make something which, if it wasn't money, was just as valuable as we'd be needing the heat this winter. After cleaning and tuning the Stihl 290 I loaded my truck with the saw and a shovel, gloves and ear muffs and saw tools, coffee thermos and a small lunch, and drove down the hill to Eight Street. The dirt road climbed steeply winding into the Boise Front. Below was the wide valley, the sky hazy from four days of high pressure and a fire somewhere off in the hills. Below timberline were sheep grazing among the sage. There was a white canvas shepherd's wagon parked on an open ridge and later, driving back down, I'd see the dark-skinned man in charge of the sheep and wonder if he was Basque or Latino, riding a horse and leading two hobbled horses down the hill.

The road passed the grey poles of standing dead from the 95' burn, then switch-backed into the living pines. It joined the ridge road and I followed the latter north, leaving behind a few kooky cabins in a draw for a sunny stretch of open ridge that picked my spirits up. I couldn't understand why, but I was strangely a little nervous about the venture. Nothing of the task was foreign to me, I've always felt comfortable and confident alone in the woods, and my objective was basic enough: find some good firewood in the form of dead standing or slash piles, limb and buck the poles, stack them in the pickup, be careful not to slip with the saw or trip over any rolling limbs, and enjoy the quiet and the view as much as possible while still hard at work. Yet I was on edge somehow, riddled by the feeling that failure was at my heals and unless I was diligent and even a tad lucky, I would be driving back down that road with an empty truck and perhaps worse, a bandaged limb.

And at first there were problems. I found a decent slash pile and hauled out the few long poles worth bucking and got to work. But soon the saw began dying on me. I figured the idle was too low for the altitude so I used my tiny flathead to adjust the carborator but the engine kept bogging down at low speeds. Every time I let off the trigger, the saw hanging from one hand, to haul over or reset a trunk, the saw would sputter dead. It became so unnerving, as though something larger was after me, a pestering fate that did not want me to succeed. And in my impatience, instead of taking ten minutes to sit down with the saw and solve the problem, I pushed on, gassing the saw in idle, the chain rolling while I worked with my other hand. It was foolhardy of me and I knew it. If I'd been my squad boss I'd have given myself a good earfull over the matter.

After gutting the first pile, the truck bed less than half full, I drove back along the road to another area I'd seen. It was less a pile than a clearing where some logging had taken place and there were skid trails running down through the brush to a stand of big grey widowmakers. They had left a number of logs and kiln-dry poles were everywhere. This was the pile I should have hit when I saw it instead of driving on to scout further. My spirits picked up seeing the stash. From down the hill I dragged about a dozen twenty-foot trees up near the truck, took a minute to eat an apple and granola bar, and before getting started fiddled with the saw. Indeed the problem was with the idle speed, and once I got the mix right, I felt some relief. I topped off the gas-mix and the bar oil, and pulling the chord felt the saw roar to life. Then positioning myself around the perimeter of the criss-crossed logs, worked my way in, lopping at the ends. The work began to calm me. It was going well and finding a rhythm I soon forgot my worries and the strains in my back and forearms and after a couple hours of cutting and stacking and hauling up new poles to buck, the truckbed was nearly full: close to three-quarters of a cord. I had to force myself to stop. I would have cut more, but time was running out, as I'd promised Anna I'd be back by mid-afternoon to watch Ada so she could paint.

I packed the saw and fuel cans and the empty oil containers some assholes had left on top of the stacked wood, took a minute to gaze out at Shaffer Butte, granite humps shining in the sun through the blue pines, then started the drive down. The truck moved like an overloaded donkey down the narrow, deep-rutted road. Which is to say, slow and sure-footedly. Once I had to pull to the side of the hill to let an up-coming truck pass, and suddenly I felt the bed slide and pitch into the gully. I had been feeling pretty good about my accomplishments, but in that moment of sliding all of my anxiousness returned. But what the hell was I so touchy about? And why wouldn't the condition pass, even after I'd achieved my goal? I put the Nissan in four and the old donkey pulled easily out of the gully. Everything would turn out fine, the trip would be fruitful. Yet my apprehension would remain until I pulled into the driveway of our home.

And I think to some small degree I can sympathize with what people were going through during the Great Depression. I have been without a steady dependable job since February, and our savings are getting low, the shrinking numbers like the shrinking hours of daylight as winter nears, and the one thing for now that I can do to stave off that mounting cold is to cut a truckload of firewood for the house; the one thing immediately before me, in my hands, that I can do and which no boss or no dithering potential employer can take from me: a cord of wood, better than money in the bank, stacked against the house like a big security blanket.

Yet if I should fail at this small thing, then what does that say about the greater project of bringing my family up here to Idaho? If I can't go up into the hills and come back with a load of firewood, how can I manage to find a good job and pay the rent and put good food on the table? That is what is weighing on me, I realize. Stacked atop the cord of wood is a much larger pile of worries. But I can't let myself be preoccupied with that larger thing. I must watch each step, each revving of the saw and sinking of the blade into each log, white petals of sawdust spitting onto the ground. I must watch the uneven ground and the growing pile of bucked logs and not stumble.