The joy of firewood.

November 28. 

Goodwin tells me that Therien, who lives in a shanty of his own building and alone in Lincoln, uses for a drink only checkerberry-tea. (G. also called it "ivory- leaf.") Is it not singular that probably only one tea-drinker in this neighborhood should use for his beverage a plant which grows here? Therien, really drinking his checkerberry-tea from motives of simplicity or economy and saying nothing about it, deserves well of his country. As he does now, we may all do at last. 

There is scarcely a wood of sufficient size and density left now for an owl to haunt in, and if I hear one hoot I may be sure where he is. 

Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. This has been Hubbard's practice for thirty years or more, and so, it would seem, they are all dead before he gets to them. Saw Abel Brooks there with a half-bushel basket on his arm. He was picking up chips on his and neighboring lots; had got about two quarts of old and blackened pine chips, and with these was returning home at dusk more than a mile. 

Such a petty quantity as you would hardly have gone to the end of your yard for, and yet he said that he had got more than two cords of them at home, which he had collected thus and sometimes with a wheelbarrow. He had thus spent an hour or two and walked two or three miles in a cool November evening to pick up two quarts of pine chips scattered through the woods. 

He evidently takes real satisfaction in collecting his fuel, perhaps gets more heat of all kinds out of it than any man in town. He is not reduced to taking a walk for exercise as some are. It is one thing to own a wood-lot as he does who perambulates its bounds almost daily, so as to have worn a path about it, and another to own one as many another does who hardly knows where it is. 

Evidently the quantity of chips in his basket is not essential; it is the chippy idea which he pursues. It is to him an unaccountably pleasing occupation. And no doubt he loves to see his pile grow at home. 

Think how variously men spend the same hour in the same village! The lawyer sits talking with his client in the twilight; the trader is weighing sugar and salt; while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips. 

I think I should prefer to be with Brooks. He was literally as smiling as a basket of chips. A basket of chips, therefore, must have been regarded as a singularly pleasing (if not pleased) object. 

We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1859

Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. See October 22, 1853 (" One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — . . . thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably"); November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season. ")

Early twilights of these November days. See  December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight”); December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night”);  and note to December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”); February 17, 1852 ("The shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day")

***

Today I bring the chainsaw into the woods to clear fallen trees from the trails. A sunny refreshing afternoon. Careful with the saw, it does not bind except in one old rotten log I think will be like butter. I kick the log open and retrieve the saw.

On the porcupine trail a snarl of grape vines pulls the trees down. I cleared this same spot a few years ago. And here, on the upper trail a log across the main path with two old cuts where I ran out of gas long ago. I finish the work and head to the stream.

Next to the crossing a large maple is uprooted across the trail. The stream is rushing by with last night's rain. I cut a narrow opening for the trail, leaving the maple as a bench by the stream.

Now kneeling I put the saw to the side so it won't get wet, bring my mouth to the water and take two large gulps. The water is cold and fresh.

Zphx 20091128

November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”)