The Sisyphus Files, Spring edition

As one season blends into the next, it is time for a regular installment of the Sisyphus Files. Remember to click on the little gif to see the figure push the rock up the hill and the slide down after it.

Today's edition: the woodpile.


Compa now has proper helmet, visor and chaps to work that instrument of evil, the chainsaw (though I have a far more intimate and lasting relationship with it than she, mercifully). It actually started up without too much effort. We were not chopping up the wood already in the pile; we were making small pieces of wood from the various tree trunks behind her.


Here is your faithful Caminante, looking at the wood pile and thinking of all the wood she's about to tow and haul up the hill from the three sites scattered around the property. The bandana is to avoid putting bug dope in my hair; the earphones are to my little iPod Shuffle, an addition that makes all the schlepping mindless and far more enjoyable. Who can complain hauling wood to a little bachata or David Bowie or even an oboe concerto? I have also discovered during black fly season (exacerbated by the death of the local bat population, attributed to white nose syndrome), the biggest insult there is (you wait ALL winter for spring and when it comes so do the black flies that bite and how) that having full earphones protect my ears as well as bud dope and I don't go as crazy having the bugs go in my ears. Likewise, I do flip my braid the way horses and cows do with their tails to get the bugs off my face; my aim has gotten pretty good!


Turn Compa loose with her chain saw and down come all manner of trees. Actually these saplings needed to go so that some trees can grow with proper daylight. So, since the chain had popped off the saw, Compa was sitting down and I thought this photo would be perfect of her midst all the felled trees (with piles of trees to be shredded in the background).


Here's one pile of cherry wood. I managed to haul all the wood that is on the lawn; the stuff that is still in the wooded area will be for another day. There's another pile of cherry out of sight and I managed to get half of it up to the upper woodpile. Yes, it is all uphill towing. Good for those glutes.


Looking across the lower yard, past the lily bed and the bird house are two piles of birch, one at the foot of the terraced beds, the other in the brambles. I got rid of the one in the brambles and relocated it to the upper pile.


For the really heavy stuff, I use the wheelbarrow; otherwise we have this old beat-up heavy-duty plastic sled (EXPEDITION) in which we have hauled rocks and wood. Note the rhodedendron to the right of the photo; it will bloom in another two weeks or so.

By the end of the afternoon, I had doubled the size of the woodpile. Of course the next thing is splitting all of it, another sort of back-breaking activity, and then finally stacking it all. BUT! This year we will have enough wood to heat the house and not have to go begging for it from other people.

Now, isn't this far more scintillating and vital than 'As the Anglican World Turns'?