On Stacking Wood

One of the tasks that needs doing while I am still here is loading up the wood racks by the house.

My father had metal ricks put in under the porch to make stacking of wood easier and more convenient. Every few days, he would go out and pull some in and stack it.  He stacked out on the porch as well for the last few years as he got older to make the trips less.  For me, we have some good weather now, so better to pull it in before next month and the rain and cold hits.

The trek back and forth from the wood pile is maybe 50 yards each way.  I am still using up the "old wood" he kept under a tarp which as not all that good to start with and he was using up first before he got into the good, cured wood.  Likely he would have burned it all if he had been here beyond January 2020.  As it is, I will likely not get through all of it this year.

The day is one of those pleasant days that makes for a good day working outside:  the sun is warm but not too hot, the sky a brilliant blue streaked with white streamers that for all that I wish foretold rain, just mock me in the late October afternoon. The wheelbarrow - the old one I remember from my own childhood that mixed concrete and carried wood in its own day - creaks as I trudge back and forth over the uneven ground and gopher holes, trying to forget that I just spend the day doing nothing but being on the computer, doing things that in 10 years will matter not at all.

There are only two ricks of wood left, one which is surprisingly in pretty good condition and one which is definitely of the sub-par variety.  I start with the better wood to fill up the middle rick by the house, the one with the larger chunks that will burn slowly during the day as I work away.  The older, less good wood comes next and faces in the rick closest to the door.  Dry, it makes for a good fire builder post kindling, but I would likely run through it at a fast clip if I was to burn it at like I would normal wood.  This is what my father did; this is what I do as well.

I pull up by the rick and toss the wood into the wheelbarrow.  Sometimes I try and stack it but sometimes I become a bit lazy and just throw it in - after all, there is no prize for organization at this point of the job, only at the end when the wood goes on the stack

I am somewhat nonchalant as I make my way back and forth between one set of ricks and the other. I am not on a particular schedule with this:  my goal is to clear the outside ricks of wood by stacking by the house or moving the remainder of the "good" wood into the woodshed - but I am here until the weekend and have sufficient afternoons and evenings where I otherwise engaged to get it done.  Besides stacking wood is something that one should not really rush to do:  it falls into that pleasant set of tasks where by one is busy enough with one's hands to make the time go by, but not so busy that the mind cannot wander as it needs to.

The valley is quiet, except for some plane noises I hear vaguely overhead.  There are no cars, no dog barks, no background symphony of power tools or gunshots or the odd portable generator going off.  Just me, the bumping wheelbarrow, and the thud of wood as it hits the stack.

Stacking the wood  makes me feel closer to my father, who stacked wood every year that he lived here and even before he lived here, when he would come up from our hometown, cut wood from The Ranch, and bring it home.  Wood cutting, wood stacking - this were recreational activities for him, not just the practice of necessity or of a man preparing for a Winter three years ahead.  He genuinely enjoyed doing this work; of all of the things he did at the property, stacking wood was the one thing he never gave up on.

The sun drifts into the trees as I take a last load up.  Night falls more quickly, now that High Summer has past and Winter - for all the clouds and cold that promise rain but will not give it - is upon us.  The clouds streak above my head as I park the wheelbarrow under the porch for the evening. 

My father saw the same sky, I think as I go inside.