Wonderful Firewood

Firewood, to Kenny Ray and some others the word brings picture of sledge hammers and wedges, sweaty hard work in cutting splitting and stacking; to me it has never been that.
Now do not get me wrong I have spent plenty of days with sore muscles and the need for some Advil and Tari’s heating pad on my back. And sometimes in March it easier to turn on the furnace than to drag more wood into the house. But I love to sit by the heating stove in the early morning with cup of coffee or a cold snowy day with a book and curled up on the couch while old man winter is howling outside. Whenever I am hunting or in the woods I am always looking for dead or blown over trees that will make good wood.
However my favorite part has always been spending time with Uncle Ken, Dad, Lester and now the Little Boy. Just this past Friday I had planned and spent the better part of the day with Uncle Ken and the Little Boy on the mountain dragging out and cutting two big loads of Ash, White oak and Sassafras wood. We would work a while then take a break and tell stories of days past of rabbit hunting and of other days in the woods with each other and the fun we have had.
I got back to the cabin with a load of White Oak and stacked on it on the porch. I then got me a cup of coffee and sat out on the porch next to stack of wood and the Little Boy got on the four wheeler and went riding. As I sat there sipping coffee and enjoying the smell of the White Oak I thought about different times spent cutting firewood, there was the time Uncle Ken was hauling firewood out of the woods with four wheeler and wagon and he rolled them up on the mountain and he had to walk out. He called me that evening to tell me about it and to bring some tools to get it out of the woods. Then there was the time the steering column broke on his old truck up on the mountain and I had to come fix.
I had a little Ranger pickup a few years ago and I put it over the hill to load with wood and I could not get out and Uncle Ken had to hook his Chevy up to me with a chain and pull me out of the woods I still hear about it to this day and it has been twenty years , not just a few I do not know where the time has gone.
I have been burning firewood for over twenty years and my Uncle over forty years now.He cuts by himself just about all the time now that Dad is gone and I worry about him being up on the mountain by himself. But he will not stop cutting firewood and I realize now that he can not as it is a part of him. The saw the maul and the trees and Uncle Ken