Why I Chop Wood

The past week has been a cold one here at Sunnyside, and I've had to keep the stove continually stoked to keep up with it. I've been chopping wood too with my Finnish-made ax, which cuts like the prose of Oscar Wilde, being finely balanced, elegantly constructed, and devastatingly effective. The firewood we buy comes already seasoned and roughly split, but if you want to keep the fire hot and also burning clean, it's best to have a healthy mix of smaller wood pieces in with the larger ones, hence the need to split at least some of the wood. As a rule I work about forty-five minutes a day, chopping and tending to all the needs of the stove.

In any case, as I was splitting wood this week, I was reminded of a moment, oh a month or so ago, when I mentioned to a coffee shop acquaintance that I chopped wood daily to fuel up my stove. This was someone with whom I've occasionally discussed books and a little politics. I think she is only vaguely aware of my homesteading aspirations. 

“Well,” she said, turning the thought over in her mind a moment, “at least that's good exercise.” I agreed that it was, and that was that; the conversation moved on. Nevertheless, I stored the moment up, especially the rather awkward pause after her “well.”

My impression of my coffee shop friend, is that, like many well-educated left-leaning Americans, she lives an environmentally concerned sort of life, so long as it doesn't cost her any appreciable sacrifice or comfort, which probably in her mind shouldn't be necessary, since eventually science will come up with the necessary improvements in renewables. Furthermore, her ideals are scholarly and cultural. She assumes that the life of the mind can be lived without much reference to the life of the body. That, if there's learning to do, or an enlightening interview on the radio, the chores can wait. That the reason we have snow blowers, automatic washing machines, central air, and food from the deli, is to free ourselves from drudgery, and commit ourselves to the pursuit of more worthy tasks. 

So what she was struggling with in that little awkward pause, I think, was just how to justify in her own mind, my spending precious personal time on the task of chopping wood. Chopping wood, is, after all, not what most people would classify as mentally enriching, say like a book or a good jazz concert in Chicago. It's not self-improving like meditation. It's also what Reagan did to pass the time on his ranch, which doesn't endear the activity to the Left. So, some part of her was probably asking me: “If you're looking for a little heat in the house, why not just locate the thermostat on the wall and press the up-arrow where it says "temperature"? Or, if you really MUST own a wood stove, why not purchase wood for it that's been chopped to an accurate choppiness in the first place? Why waste time chopping it yourself? Just think what you could be doing with that time!"

Which is why apparently the only real justification she could come up with that fit with her sense of my basic sanity was, well, exercise and all the good things that come with it: a life free of heart disease and maybe cancer too, which, in turn would ensure a decent life span and thus more time for concerts and books and meditation. So, good. Exercise. That must be why he's chopping wood. 

Now, I am aware that I'm being a little satirical here. And the satire is of course intentional. Satire has real uses. Satire clears the mind of cant. Still, my point is not to make fun of a human being for having a certain outlook, especially when such views on living (if I've described them accurately) are not far from the views I myself held say, five years ago. I am a Johnny-come-lately to the peak oil, de-growth, and homesteading camps, and I certainly have no corner on carbon-free lifestyle purity. No one does really, except perhaps the poorest of the poor in places far away from me, and they, to be frank about it, generally not by choice. 

But. It was certainly not for exercise that I bought the ax. Nor for longer life and all that. I bought the ax because I wanted to chop wood, and I wanted to chop wood because that's part of the art of keeping a wood stove hot. And we bought the wood stove because we wanted to heat our home as minimally as possible and as renewably as possible, and a wood stove does that pretty well—not perfectly, but pretty well. 

So it's a pretty big thing—the ax. It's a kind of creed in the person of a tool. It chops about what I believe. About how much I want to give to the world, and how much (or how little) I want to take from it. It's an image of my resolve to give every hour of every day something of a physical tang.

So, in harmony with my ax, while the year is still new; while it still feels like a propitious time to reassert and recommit myself, I want to articulate once again, for myself and for my readers, the two major reasons I do the homesteading work I do, chopping wood inclusive—work which is, by and large yes, physical work. Work that's sometimes, yes, boring and repetitive. Work that yes, also takes a good deal of time.

1. I believe that for the earth's sake, and also for the sake of humanity's future, it's time to wean ourselves from the daily use of so many machines, which pollute the planet in their manufacture and their use. Carbon pollution is maybe the biggest and most weightily worrisome of these forms of pollution, but it is by no means the only one. There is for instance, sonic pollution. Distraction pollution. Narcissism pollution. Sex pollution. Information pollution. Speed pollution...etc.
2. I believe that physical work, done for a purpose directly connected with my own body's keeping, deeply enriches my mental and spiritual life. It's as simple as that. The sense of competence gained. The sense of closeness to the elements. The sense of immediate access to beauty, in flowers and the living earth. The depth of what you might call “the reality factor” in my life. Also the way my relationships with my family and community have been strengthened by means of this work: All of this has combined to make the considerable time I put into homesteading seem much more like an investment than a thing consumed away. Of course, I can't be certain that the householding experience for others would be as positive as it has been here for us here at Sunnyside. Still, plenty of other venues on the internet and plenty of books these days, resonate with the same theme: “Don't be afraid to change. The rewards are real.”

All of which makes the thought of chopping wood merely for exercise seem pretty small in comparison. Or maybe you could say that the goodness of exercise is just an extra that  comes with the complete homesteading kit, that when certain of your ducks are in a row, the others waddle their way into the line as well. Because of course, hefting the ax, washing the clothes with a board and plunger, kneading bread, lugging rainwater around the house-corner in a pail, hoeing weeds, chopping leaves to enable their efficient assimilation into the protozoic nation of the compost pile: sure, all of it's great exercise. I can't think of any better exercise. I can't think of any better kind of life. 

More on the question of time though soon! There's so much more to grapple with. So much more to say. 

HB

(Next Post January 18th)