Date Night with Power Tools.

We've been in town the past couple weekends, not necessarily by choice, but because we've had engagements around here. It's a good time of year to be tethered near home, though, because it gives us a chance to stock up on wood for the coming winter.

Left to my own devices, I would probably not spend Friday evenings traipsing through the woods looking for dead trees, aka, future firewood. But the truth is, last Friday, just before dusk, when the air was cool and still, I could think of nothing I'd rather be doing.

We went to Lambs Canyon with Andrew; there was a downed pine near the Samuels-McLean property that needing chopping up. The old green truck climbed the canyon in first gear, and as I creeped slowly forward, I thought back to last winter, skinning up the same incline, thinking that it wasn't all that steep. Maybe Brad's right about that truck not having any power.

While the boys - Brad and Andrew - handled the chainsaws, I stacked wood into the vehicles, watched the light change across the valley and felt greatful to live in the Wasatch. The air was sweet with pine-dust and decaying leaves. I saw moose tracks up the road. The wood promised warmth for winter.*

*Of course, if you know my husband, you know that being warm isn't an issue. More pressing is being so overheated that you start to hallucinate and run outside to bury yourself in snow becaue the house is topping 100 degrees. But for the sake of poetry, I'll keep the text as is.

Before we headed home in our low-riding, timber-filled vehicles, I decided that I should learn how to operate a chainsaw. After all, Brad loves them so much he has one for each hand.

Andrew snapped a few pics of my damage. You'll notice that Brad couldn't even watch my destruction of his beloved Homelite, and I can't say I blame him. Rather than yielding the neat, stackable shape that others seem to produce, my efforts with the chainsaw were rewarded with what Andrew described as a "spiral cut ham."




In fact I didn't actually make it through the log. Once the sawdust cleared and the gentlemen assisted in the cutting, the remaining mishapen hank of wood was relegated to a chew toy for the dogs.

Well, not really. The dogs were scared of it.