It’s firewood time! No it’s not just fall or late summer, or even back to school time. It’s firewood time, and there are some life lessons here.
Firewood time is when I, and perhaps anyone else who is brave enough to admit it, scrambles to put up a big pile of firewood to be used for winter warming. This should have been done months ago! LOL.
From left to right Andy, myself and Mike
But every year I get it done just barely in time to let it dry out and season enough to burn well. And then I say “I’ll never wait till the last minute again!” Ha!
I guess that’s the first lesson one can glean from firewood or at least the way I wait till the last minute to get mine ready – procrastination is a part of life. Most of us do our best work when under pressure. I suspect we should cherish pressure. LOL.
That seasoning part is a lesson also. You see, firewood does not burn well unless it’s totally dry. If you cut up a live tree, the wood is full of sap (moisture) and that can take weeks if not months to dry out properly. So we call it seasoned when it’s become dry enough to burn. Hmmmm, I suspect this is a lesson in patience. I wonder what else I should have patience with? Plenty!
And then there is the cutting of the firewood with the chain saw. It helps to sharpen the saw blade first. Every year I start cutting and wonder why these dang logs are so hard to cut! After struggling for hours I finally come to realize that I forgot to sharpen the blade. Duhhh!!! So I then go to the garage, sharpen the blade, and then voila! Sharpening the blade makes all the difference. I guess proper preparation is another lesson here. And better yet, do the preparation first!! LOL.
So then, after the logs are cut, then they need to be split. The splitting is totally necessary because they won’t fit in the wood stove whole, and they dry out faster. Splitting holds another life lesson – don’t go against the grain! Yes, every piece of wood has a grain pattern. You can see the grain quite clearly. Try to split against the grain and you’ve got a battle on your hands. But split along the grain and you succeed easily. Success. Aha! Perhaps we should all strive to look for the grain, the easier way to do something, before we take a whack at anything! It hurts when I take a whack at a log going against the grain. I wonder what pains we could avoid in our lives if we first take the time to look things over before we ……
Work with the grain not against it.
It would normally take me about 2-3 weeks of working a few hours a day to obtain a large enough pile of firewood for my heating needs. But then God blessed me with some special helpers called kids. My two boys are now old enough to be a tremendous help to me. I cut, Andy splits, and Mike stacks. Now we get the job done in about 1 week. Another lesson – teamwork!
But the best lesson of all will come on a screaming cold winter evening, when the sky is clear and stars are bright, and the wind is howling from the north. I’ll realize that all the hard work of cutting, splitting and stacking was worthwhile as I feel the warmth of the fire on my toes.
Warm Toes = Gratefulness
It’s a lesson of gratefulness.
What are you grateful about?
I suspect my dog is grateful too!
By the way, have you seen my other blog sites?
For the general public: http://www.wholehealthhealing.com.
Specifically for doctors: http://www.reclaimthejoy.com
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