Nothing more satisfying than splitting wood.
The sounds, the smells, the lovely impression one gets of being strong (despite knowing physical power has nothing to do with successfully splitting wood).
Maybe it is especially the last bit, this feeling of power, that makes splitting wood such a joy to do?
I always believed I was one of the few women who likes splitting wood, until I passed at my neighbors house during the coldest afternoon we have had in many years.
Mother and daughter were outside near their wood pile. Mother of over 80 was fanatically chopping away, quickly filling her bucket with neatly split fine fire wood. Her daughter was trying to coerce her mother to come inside.
When I passed, the daughter pulled me inside the house to show me she had already been splitting wood herself, but her mother insisted she split some as well. She made a point of showing me her mother loved splitting wood and only did it for that reason, not because the daughter made her go outside in this inclement weather.
I walked home with the happy notion that I am not so weird as I had always believed.
What a lovely post! Yes, the smell is great – I’d never thought about the sense of power before, but it’s true. I have just one more thing to add – as Thoreau said in Walden “My wood warms me twice; one when I chop it and once when I burn it.”
Thanks! Absolutely right about the warming twice … maybe even more considering I also have to pile it …!
A beautiful sweet story, on many levels. I love the tale of the mother and daughter and then your newfound connection with both of them.