Thursday’s wind tunnel was replaced Friday by calmer conditions. We’d see the mid-50s by afternoon, though we started out below freezing for the first time in about a week.
I’ll confess to getting a bit too comfortable with the springlike weather. It’s still February, after all.
Effects of the “red flag warning” carried over into yesterday — not the wind anymore, but the way it dried out an area already suffering under “extreme” drought. Forestry put us at “high” risk of wildfire. Ten counties imposed burn bans.
Only a very wet spring can save Ozarkansas from a dangerously dry summer.
I went back to the big brushpile yesterday morning with a purpose. The oak log that defeated the Husky and me Thursday must be hanging on by only a thread, I thought, so I broke out the Wood Grenade wedge to see if I could drive it into the saw kerf and snap the round free.
That worked. But it also gave me a round that I couldn’t lift and could barely move.
Contemplating my options, I knew it’d have to be split before it went anywhere. And that’d be a job for the hydraulic splitter… right?
The voices in my head told me to try using my Fiskars splitting ax. They suggested that this exposed end of the log was soft in the center, and besides, I had nothing to lose by giving it a shot.
This would be the fattest round I’d tried to split by hand in over 40 years (and back then I wielded an eight-pound maul). I approached the challenge with confidence, focused on my mechanics and took a calculated, powerful swing.
And then I took another.
Two solid hits produced this:
Elation overwhelmed me. That kind of joy is, to me, priceless.
I processed it by the roadside, loaded seven splits into the wheelbarrow and hauled them over to my chopping block. There I turned that one oak round into dozens of stove lengths.
In that moment, I felt like I could conquer the world. I was on my game — why stop?
I grabbed two tough, green rounds from the east slope oak, ones that had humbled me a couple of weeks earlier. If ever there was a time for a rematch, this was it.
The following sequence of images captures my assault on the first round.
I stacked the morning’s work on the current pallet, bringing it to about 40% full.
Man, I felt like a winner. Seriously, it was as rewarding an experience as any I’ve had on The Mountain.
There’s such joy in this work.
I felt like a winner all day long.
Smudge and I took a leisurely walk as the sun descended in the southwestern sky. We ended up at the wood yard, where she took keen interest in the latest pallet of cordwood, almost as if she thought I was showing it off.
It met with her approval.
I looked over at the stack of unsplit green oak. The air was cool. I still had some fight in me.
I put Smudge in the cabin, returned to the chopping block with my ax and decided to split two more rounds before the sun went down.
I split four.
In these, the best days of my life, some days are better than others. Yesterday ranks near the top.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable