Homesteading Middles: Splitting Wood with The Emerald Podcast

In her book, Wait It Gets Worse, my sister wrote about the two of us splitting wood in 2013. We had borrowed a splitter from a friend and took turns maneuvering logs beneath the pressurized blade. We now own a splitting machine. Funny how these things work after you do the math of renting for a few years.

Wanting a clean slate of the most time consuming fall chore before school started - we split wood while the smalls were away. In years past we had waited for October - but getting it done now feels like a gift of kite flying in that month instead of chore twitching.

First thing in the morning before it gets too hot and then again at the end of the day before the mosquitoes take over.

It is so satisfying. To see the chunked logs reduced to a pile of freshly hewn fodder for a warm fire. Split, toss, split, toss. Eventually one stands and stretches. Eventually one gets to restack the higgledy piggledy pile into the wood pile. Each log placed just so to make sure that all stays dry and protected to keep us warm in the winter.

Each type of tree has its own shape and feel. Cherry wood kinks and curls. Yellow mulberry is heavy despite the widely spaced growth rings (which means it is a fast growing tree). Hickory has a majestic brown heartwood with pale cream sapwood beneath the cambium. White oak, straight and true, so easy to split - she needs barely a tap and the logs peel off from the main. Those logs came from trees which fell or were diseased.

The final logs come from our black locust coppicing wood lot. Black locust is dense and ponderous with a scant bark thickness.

Body occupied and the need for ear protection enables me to savor The Emerald podcast. I am blown away by what Joshua Michael Schrei has created. I started listening from the very beginning and we are in high covid times at the moment.

Crouching over the machine, Josh’s words pierce, provoke, and prod my psyche. From In These Mythic Times: Monsoon, Apocalypse, and What are Truly Longing For (August 4, 2020, 17:41 time stamp) he gifts me the best visual to accompany the maxim “so without as within” I have ever encountered.

For if, for example, you were to magnify your own heart right now to be the size of the world. What would be the state of the world? …

Would there be wars in your world heart? How would ripples of resentment look when magnified into oceans? Would there be disparity in this world heart? Would all be loved equally? Or would some be shown more favor? Would there be privilege and blame?

Who would be sentenced to die in your world heart? Who would be cast out in chains? Would your world heart look a whole lot different than what we have today?

Then I press pause on the phone. And I take a look at my heart. The heart that holds such love and such hate. Such compassion and such judgement - of myself and of others.

So I come back to gratitude. Hoping that will flush away the crevices of darkness in my heart.

Thank you for your wood - for your bodies - that we might heat our home, cook our food, and have dancing flames on dark winter evenings.

Thank you for the strength in my hands and the bruises on my legs from flying wood.

Thank you for the time on the land to do this.

Thank you for this life.