I do love my mornings. The beauty is worth the chill.
(The same isn’t true of people. Ever.)
We enjoyed a pleasant, cloudless Saturday here on The Mountain. Once the sun began tickling the east side of the cabin roof, it brought natural warmth that’d last throughout the day — a curse in July, a blessing in December.
I put the last log on the fire at 8:25am.
I didn’t start another burn ’til 4:10pm. The sun would set 45 minutes later, and temps would fall into the mid-40s by then. That’s not bone-chilling, but as I said in my last post, the idea is to stay ahead of the game.
This is what we do.
When I ventured into the woods Friday to buck firewood, I carried three knives — my trusty Bark River Bravo 1 fixed-blade, a Case trapper pocketknife with orange scales, and the Kubey Tityus folder I’ve grown to appreciate despite its country of origin.
I bought the Case at Miller Hardware three years ago. The venerable two-blade trapper is one of my favorite slipjoint patterns, and this one serves me well. Still, I felt the need to swap it out for variety’s sake, aiming perhaps for something smaller.
It would’ve been easy to reach for either of two Barlows I have in my rotation, but I fancied something different. I thought about it awhile and chose another Case — a two-blade canoe, purchased at Smoky Mountain Knife Works when I visited Tennessee four years ago.
It’s brand-new, still in the box. This’ll be the first I’ve carried it.
The canoe is light and slim, with two spear-point blades (my long-standing preference) in CV stainless. The liners and pins are brass, the bolsters nickel silver. Scales are gray jigged bone, featuring Case’s “pocket worn” treatment.
I bought this knife for a reason — it checks all my boxes, with the exception of carbon-steel blades. I figure it’s high time I put it to work.
The very last thing my body wanted to do yesterday was mess with firewood. I woke up paying the price for the previous day’s work, first evident when lifting a mug of coffee sent sharp pain from my wrist up into my shoulder.
The indoor rack was full (or full enough to last me ’til Sunday), and adding to next heating season’s stores could wait, so I gave myself a one-day break from it.
Instead, I took care of a number of minor to-dos. One of those was rescuing my crossbow target from the wet ground, where it had landed recently when the straw bales on which it rested collapsed.
I rolled the wheelbarrow over to the wooded part of the lower level, loaded up the target and scattered the straw.
And that’s when I saw it.
Ten feet away was a standing-dead hardwood, far from massive but of respectable size. Its crown was missing. What remained was about 12 feet tall, nine-ish inches at the base. The wood seemed sound when I gave it a shove and rapped on the trunk.
I’m tellin’ you, this stuff is addictive.
I fetched my DeWalt chainsaw (which is badly in need of sharpening) from the shed. I gauged the tree’s lean, notched it a couple of feet from the ground and made my felling cut.
Of course, I bucked it right then and there, including taking a round from the stump. Total yield was nine rock-solid stove lengths, two or three of which I’ll split by hand later.
I don’t know what kind of wood this is. Maybe hickory. Judging by the galleries under the bark, maybe ash. The dark heartwood has me puzzled.
Whatever it is, I chucked it into the wheelbarrow with the target, took it back to the wood yard and stacked it to season.
So no, Saturday didn’t pass without me doing something related to heating my home next winter. The wood isn’t gonna come in by itself, and this was a nice little haul for very little effort.
One of the great things about the Christmas season is the flood of big-sale and buy-this-now e-mails that inundates my inbox. I’m serious about that — all those mailing lists I forgot I’d signed up for (and many that I didn’t sign up for) suddenly wake up this time of year.
I like that because it makes it ridiculously easy to thin the herd. Open, scroll to the end, click “unsubscribe,” gone.
Ditto text messages. STOP, send, gone.
Gotta watch out for spam, of course, and Trojan horses. But having unwanted senders all showing up at the same time sure is handy. Merry Christmas.
A long-time friend sent me a music video yesterday — Five Finger Death Punch’s cover of the Kenny Wayne Shepherd classic, “Blue on Black.” She said it made her think of me and what I’ve been through this year.
Though those circumstances don’t preoccupy me these days, the lyrics are apt and I was touched by the gesture. I do like the song. 5FDP’s cover is killer.
This particular version is a re-release, sort of, to benefit the Gary Sinise Foundation. It includes contributions from KWS himself and Brantley Gilbert.
Also, notably, the second guitar solo is performed by an elderly British astrophysicist on a homemade guitar that he and his father built from salvaged materials in the early ’60s. Nice touch.
I didn’t watch any of the Big Eighteen conference championship football game Saturday night, but I suspect the commentators told a certain Lee Corso anecdote. Probably more than once.
The year was 1976, and Corso was head coach of near-hapless Indiana. Early in the Hoosiers’ home game against Ohio State, he called a timeout so that the team photographer could take a picture of the sideline with the scoreboard in the background.
Indiana 7, Ohio State 6.
That hell-froze-over moment, which Corso thought might be good for recruiting, was short-lived. The Woody Hayes-coached Buckeyes went on to win that day, 47-7.
Last night was quite a different story. After 37 years and something like 30 straight wins, Ohio State lost to Indiana, 13-10.
Both teams will be top-four seeds in the upcoming CFP tournament anyway. This was a trophy game, a matter of pride. The Hoosiers earned braggin’ rights.
A couple of observations. First, I remember seeing that the over-under for last night’s game was 46.5. Only reckless bettors took the over — the teams’ stats this season virtually guaranteed a game dominated by defense.
Also, I got to wondering why the two teams have never become rivals in a “border war” kinda way. The same could be asked of Penn State, I suppose. (For the record, Ohio State hasn’t played Kentucky in football in 90 years.)
Truth is, The Game with TTUN sucks up all the rivalry oxygen. That, and the Buckeyes’ historical dominance. The conference landscape won’t change.
But you never know.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable