Chopping block

He was right. I stumbled upon a big find and pulled in a motherload a few weeks ago. I’d been doing my damnedest to keep that stash a dark secret and was a little surprised that word was already spreading.

But the man was persistent. In casual yet professional tones, he politely started unearthing the details. “So, where’d you find the stuff,” he added. “I assume it was a pretty good grade.”

Again, he was right on target. The goods had been easy to access, were in pristine order, and promised to be slow burning. “Sounds perfect, especially since I’ve only got a couple of free hours this weekend, you know between working extra hours, the kids … ,” he pleaded.

I cut him off right there, took a breath and blurted out the location. I gave up that secret, just like I had with a favorite powder stash, a secret trail or two and one of my favorite primo desert camping spots (it doesn’t hurt that he’s a direct relation). Minutes later, he climbed into the truck and pointed it for that prime enclave of standing dead ponderosa. I only hope it’s helping feed his voracious firewood habit. I know it helped me feed mine.

Like many Durangoans, I spent the last two weekends bringing in the big haul. Over the course of three outings, I harvested some of nature’s bounty in hopes of warding off the coming cold. Call me a weirdo, but I sincerely enjoy wandering the woods with my chainsaw. The process is almost always as good as the product, and many of the moments were sublime for this amateur lumberjack and his brood.

Two weeks ago, the whole family spent the afternoon bringing in thick rounds of blue spruce under late fall sunshine. Mother Nature had kindly blown down a mature tree that was dozens of feet tall and dozens of years in the growing. Sometime early this spring, she felled it with a stiff breeze and laid it perfectly across a small boulder, sawhorse style. The cuts were easy, the wood was perfectly cured and not even my close relations would hear about this find. Best of all, all three members of the Sands clan were on hand, bringing in the load and taking a stake in our shared winter warmth. When the day was done, the Sands wood shed was half full, and this exhausted cutter was happily sawing a different type of log atop pillow ridge.

However, some of my recent cuts have been less than dreamy, like last Friday morning’s exploits. On that fateful mission, this lone lumberjack dropped two standing dead ponderosas that were already getting a bit on the mealy side. I then had to lug the load through thick scrub, over a pair of 7-foot cliffs and down a steep embankment to the pickup. At a definite low point, mud filled my boots just as a rogue round bounced off course and ripped the mudflap off my truck in a bout of poetic injustice. Oh and I almost forgot, it was pouring rain throughout the ordeal.

But, even that was not a bad day for this hungry logger. Ask almost anyone who burns in the winter – there’s something “special” about gathering and splitting wood.

While I’m particularly enamored with clearing deadfall from my personal property, driving 5 miles from my front door and into the San Juan National

Forest takes a close second place. The tools of the trade have also captured my fickle heart. What can I say? Men and chainsaws go together like 8th grade and Playboy magazine. The facts that wood is a renewable resource and deadfall has the same carbon footprint on the ground as inside my firebox don’t hurt the process either.

But that’s not why I loaded up the saw, purchased my flashy day-glow wood cutting permits and ventured into the woods this fall. For me, the experience is more about connection than end results.

Call me a Luddite, but something is lost when the thermostat gets cranked up and the monthly gas bill arrives at the end of the month. Sure it’s convenient to sit back, hear the whir of forced air and hide from the wiles of Old Man Winter. But cutting, chopping and stacking wood speaks to something deep in my genetic coding. Firing up the Stihl and working for the coming winter seems to restore a bit of my humanness each fall (and it doesn’t hurt that thousands are staying in my pocket and out of the petrochemical industry’s grubby hands).

Trading a few hard afternoons and a few dozen dollars in permits seems like a pretty good bargain to me. If I can hold onto all of my digits, I plan on bringing in the big loads for many years to come, assuming I can keep word of my prized stashes from getting out.
– Will Sands