I’m not afraid of a little hard work. In fact, I enjoy it. It gets me moving, keeps me somewhat in shape, and most hard-work tasks come with the reward of being able to look at what you’ve done and get a feeling of accomplishment.
That’s certainly the case with cutting firewood. But in addition to all those other benefits, cutting firewood comes with a few more perks. First of all, you get to go to the mountains to do it. We tend to go to new places every year to gather firewood, so we get to see new country each time we go.
You don’t often see many critters when you cut firewood, because the chainsaw tends to deter elk, moose, deer and other wildlife from venturing anywhere near you. But we almost always get to see at least a few wild animals on the drive up or on the way back home.
It’s also almost always cooler up in the mountains than it is down in town, so you get to escape the heat for a little while – which is good, because you heat yourself up pretty good while you’re cutting and hauling logs.
A couple of weekends ago, we went up to a chunk of land some friends bought in a small patch of private land in the middle of the national forest. They are working to clear out all the standing dead trees and all the deadfall on the property so they can build a cabin up there, and we needed the firewood. So it worked out perfectly. We spent the day cutting up downed timber, then knocking down the trees that would eventually fall down on their own. We got it about halfway cleared out, and we only hauled back a small fraction of what we cut down, so we’ll be able to go back and do it all again several more times this summer.
If you don’t cut your own firewood, you should give it a go. It’s hard work, but it’s worth the effort.
