Thoughts on Fallen Trees

– By Allen Clark –

All the concern about the Nor'easter this past Sunday brought back memories of just over a year ago, when whopping winds and driving rain took down three trees in our backyard. Starting with a very old apple tree, then uprooting a 45-foot maple and ending with a small flowering cherry, this storm not only changed our backyard and turned certain gardens from shade to sun, it presented me with a three-month preoccupation I had not expected.

I had just stepped down from day-to-day work on The Rye Record. Not sure where I would place my newfound free time, the storm moved me from not splitting infinitives to splitting enough wood for three years of winter fires. It also created an environment in which I could focus on all kinds of things, not just where my 10-pound sledge was striking my freshly sharpened wedges.

Having a fire, especially at cocktail hour, has been one of my core beliefs ever since I had my own fireplace. And a corollary is that one need never buy firewood. There has always been spare wood if one just looked for it. This is as true of the little branches and twigs that make excellent starters as it is of large limbs. Perhaps most important, the process of collecting, then splitting, cutting and stacking, and then enjoying the fruits of your labor in your own home is one of life's great pleasures. It is both an emotional and physical process that has nothing to do with saving money, although that's a bonus.

So, a year ago January, when my yard was denuded of the aforementioned trees, I had the opportunity to experience all of this personal satisfaction in a concentrated period of time. Three months maximum, in fact, said my soul, and housemate.

Step one was to trim all the small branches, which then had to be bundled for roadside pickup, less any pieces large enough to be used for fires. Then, professional tree men quartered anything I could not cut by hand with my trusty Swedish bow saw — anything larger than 9” diameter. (Power saws are not part of my process.)

Then the splitting began. Each morning, I took my post in the backyard and swung my sledge — over and over. There was the inner smile that comes from hitting the wedge perfectly and seeing a log fall cleanly into two perfect pieces on one swing. There was the appreciation when, after two hours, the line of tree chunks had diminished by two feet, and the woodpile against the stone wall had grown by the same dimension. Even when frustration crept in as the gnarly maple resisted repeated blows, the prospect of ultimately winning buoyed my spirits.

I must admit that I lacked the strength and experience of Abe Lincoln, and wasn't up to using an ax, but I could connect with his log-splitting prowess. I also felt a kinship with the pioneers as I returned every so often to hone the edges on my wedges, using an old refrigerator motor I'd rigged up with a whetstone wheel in my basement. And I certainly relished the physical sensations and use of muscles long dormant.

But what set me thinking in a poetic vein was the appearance one cold day of a man looking for work. He had climbed up some outdoor stairs on our house and shouted to me in the back, saying he would cut up all that wood for a small price.

As former Poet Laureate Billy Collins begins his poem “Splitting Wood,”

Frost covered this decades ago,
and frost will cover it again tonight
A bit later, he observes,
The pleasures here are well known:
the feet planted wide,
the silent unstoppable-flow of the downswing,
the coordination that is called hand-eye,
because the hand achieves,
whatever the concupiscent eye desires
leading to,
I want to say there is nothing
like the sudden opening of wood

Collins was correct on his chronology; Frost did cover this years before. As I told the jobseeker, I was doing this myself and I wanted to — and he left, understanding but nonetheless dejected. I harked back to Robert Frost reciting to me and several dozen fraternity members one night at Amherst, the tale of "Two Tramps in Mud Time.”

Mirroring my interruption, Frost tells of the two professional woodcutters who come upon the Vermont farmer splitting wood and his emotional reaction to their offer (really, demand) to relieve him of his work.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.

I understood that what I was doing was in fact “play,” that the man, who had a right to ask me, mistook what I was doing for “work.” More than that, what I was doing was a sort of ritual that Frost so astutely
observed as a mix of “love” and “need.”

My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right — agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

For Frost, uniting one's avocation and vocation is a life goal and something that the rest of the world may not comprehend. For me, back in the real world, each swing of the sledge hammered home the wisdom he wrote.