In February 2022, I cleared a series of trees along a path. Mainly lime trees. Many had a hollow center, so were unstable and at the end of their life. Last spring, a big “van” came to pick up the logs to make paper.
Three acres last winter, and three more now. This part of the forest had been damaged by the 1998 ice storm. I quote the forest engineer:
“Nothing will happen here for 100 years,” he said, pointing to the bent and damaged trees. On the ground, nothing either.
So I started cutting, for firewood, and for the sugar shack. As a hobby and to keep in shape.
Several topics last in the news: like the lady appointed by Ottawa to correct the racists here, or the consulting firm that does the work of people elected and already paid to do it, or the anniversary (really?) of the war in Ukraine… And then this tragedy in a daycare centre.
Sometimes, with the world turned upside down, words are no longer useful. Let us take a break today to tell something else.
The “van” full of logs eight feet to the brim fetched $2,600. “They make newsprint out of that,” the driver said. Once the deductions were applied (freight, truck fuel, loading, unloading, paperwork…), there was $1400 left. It doesn’t cover the cost of the forester I’m doing this with, or the fuel for our chainsaws, maintenance, or equipment… but it does feel like it’s serving a purpose.
If it is to print news and inform the citizen, it joins the useful to the pleasant, we say to ourselves. But maybe I’m wrong about benevolence; It happens really often these days. This annoying tendency to dream that deep down, we are good and everything will be fine.
This winter, therefore, I collect hardwood (elm, hickory, cherry, beech) to heat the house. The others (the cedars – which are actually cedars, there are no cedars in eastern America –, trembling aspen, hemlock, etc.) go to make firewood. camping, to make fires in the summer.
And deforested acres are replanted. So far, 1560 maples. For the sequel. For those who follow.
To friends and family who come to the cabin in the spring, the only hostess gift (hey…hey…) they want is newspapers, to leave the stoves. Time for a parenthesis here: the stove is EPA certified and the mass fireplace emits even less pollution. What’s more, last week, after a clever calculation, the chain saw and the log splitter cost 55 cents in gas to cut an elm tree that heated the house for eight days. But we are moving away.
Sometimes, to warm up and dry the laundry, I leave the cabin’s wood stoves too. With the newspapers received as a gift, of course. And who knows, maybe the paper is even made from my trees? Do you ever know how life is so well organized and full of meaning sometimes? This week, by chance, an article from the Montreal Journal of 2017 on Roxham Road in which there are concerns about the increasing number of refugees crossing it. And in a Publisac, chicken cuts were advertised at $8.99 a kilo (the good old days!). Or even a more recent text on the war in Ukraine where several specialists express their opinions, which have become obsolete in a fraction of a second.
We complain about the obsolescence of objects, but what about ideas? We are surprised to think that only the horoscope remains correct since the origin of the world.
What I love above all is sharpening the saws on the “tailgate” of the pick-up. Sharpening is the key to everything. Almost every day. With a file (a rat’s tail), each tooth is also filed. If it’s five strokes, it’s five strokes for all the teeth. You mustn’t miss one, otherwise it cuts off. But above all, it sharpens the head: it allows you to forget for 15 minutes that you are the center of the world and it is above all full of promise; I imagine a fire with people gathering around it and it momentarily makes you forget some horrors. My hands smell of oil and gas. And spring will come.