Chopping Wood on 9/11

After Enlightenment

The saw slipped through the logs, coaxing its own way down smooth and easy just like dad said it would. Let the saw do the work, he said.

I thought of the old saw: Chop wood before fun, after fun chop wood. This wasn’t chopping but it was a form of enlightenment. This summer, my son carried water around this property, an acre of gardens and trees.

We took a break from cutting around noon. On the porch overlooking the front garden and sloping down to the road my companion remembered what day it was. It was the kind of day you remember where you were and what exactly you were doing on the day that it happened.

Like with JFK, my companion said, then asked the usual question.

On 9/11

“In the library with my class, the Juniors, at the American School of Asuncion.” I added, “In Paraguay,” though my companion was waiting for color, not political geography. So, I told him about the director general whispering to me about an airplane hitting a building in New York and thinking of a Cessna pilot gone astray, maybe a suicide, high finance type person. Tragic, but odd.

Then the library assistant wheeled out the TV and we saw all that smoke and watched the second plane.

Later that day, someone whooped in the corridor of the open-plan campus, the real lesson in political ideology.

My companion had a more interesting perch, but it was difficult to pin down, my companion being an octogenarian. He was in Rome negotiating Afghanistan issues, then London, then Newfoundland for a couple weeks, waiting in a long line to shower at a school. A Canadian offered him a place in his home, and he accepted, and interviewed with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. My companion, before 9/11, served as envoy to the Afghan resistance with the rank of ambassador.

Cutting Wood

He needed help cutting logs. We’d been trying to get to the wood since spring. Every time we scheduled it, rain got in the way. During the summer, my sons did odd jobs in the yard.

We ate Vietnamese for lunch, a pork dish with rice wet cake, then got back to work. We tossed the logs in the back of a 2003 Tundra and drove out 66 to the county dump. For $19 you can leave all your stumps and brush at the dump.

I thought we might be doing a kind of carbon capture and burying the logs in a landfill. Instead, we left them for mulching, speeding along greater carbon emissions instead of eliminating them.

I don’t know the age or type of tree, didn’t count the rings. Likely an oak. My companion could have told me if I’d thought to ask, he might even have consulted a specialist about it at Virginia Tech.

What I know of this tree is that it’s one of several to come down in his yard the last three years. The first, three years ago, fell during a storm and crushed a neighbor’s fence. The neighbor, with little tact, insisted my companion take down two other trees that might or might not threaten his pool, his side of the fence.

I can thank this rude little man for my opportunity at enlightenment on this dark anniversary: before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

It was a lovely break from a week of steady writing and revision, a labor of love but a labor all the same, like chopping wood and carrying water.

What physical labor do you enjoy when not setting your thoughts on paper?

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