I saw a video of a man dropping a great axe onto a chunk of wood, splitting it in two, and a frisson of pleasure burst through my bloodstream: I remembered chopping wood.
My first-ever house was purchased in Madera, California, which is in the middle of the San Joaquin valley. The average temperature, in summer, was about 108 degrees. (This is a slight exaggeration.) It seldom gets very cold, there, but I was from the East, and when I noticed that my new house had a fireplace, it did not occur to me that it might go unused. And it did not, though the fires stoked in that fireplace were mostly ceremonial and were in no way necessary for warmth. I bought two cords of wood, lived in the house for two years — during which time, no wood was chopped — and left the new owner with firewood aplenty when I sold it and moved to Southern Indiana in the spring of 1978.
The winter of 1977-1978 had been a brutal one for Indiana, and when I breezed into town from Central California, I scoffed at the dire warnings from my new friends; I was after all, a native of the snowfalls of Western Pennsylvania. But my new house had not one, but two fireplaces and I was once again tasked with the responsibility of purchasing firewood. My new neighbor recommended someone who sold me “ricks” of wood, a term that I had not heard in California. And I was presented with the challenge of chopping chunks of those ricks of wood into smaller pieces, suitable for flinging into the fireplace, a task that required me to invest in a new tool: an axe.
There were no YouTube videos of how to split wood in 1978, so I had to casually observe other wood-choppers and try to remember the movements. This lack of personal experience with the splitting of wood brought some fear and hilarity to my backyard. I placed a chunk of wood on the ground and approached it, as warily as a cat, with my new axe. I knew that I must bring my axe over my head and strike downward into the chunk of wood, ever mindful of things like “grain,” and “knots.” But as I raised my tool for the first time, I imagined that a missed stroke would glance off the wood and the axe would promptly chop off my leg. This gave me some pause, and my first stroke thunked into the little log just deeply enough to get stuck. Now I had an axe and a log to swing above my head, and the fear of amputation to overcome.
I’m proud to say that ol’ Woods conquered the wood, and became a rhythmic and efficient wood-chopper. My Southern Indiana home, in winter, was often warmed by the fireplaces that gobbled up the wood I split as handily as John Henry, the steel-driving man. I no longer stood in front of the wood with my legs spread as wide as my hips would allow, fearing an axe to the shin. I grew to love the rhythm involved in chopping wood, the bunching of my muscles as I raised the axe over my head, the slight twist of my hips as I aimed for the center of the stob and the satisfying whack as two pieces of wood fell from the one. I owned that wood.
“Autumn turns the leaves to gold,” as is sung in the song, and I remember when I was one who could cleave those leafless logs, bring them into my house and fire that wood.