No skating but...

It wasn’t cold enough the night after the storm to solidly freeze the rain that collected on the Frog Pond (there were surface crackings and the movement of air bubbles just under the new ice), but it did leave small crystals of frost on the ends of the large rounds of red pine stacked out by our wellhead. So there was no skating for us that day, but maybe there’d be a chance to split some wood.

The pine rounds were beautiful, freshly cut from when Trevor felled the tree last week, each end showing a striking pattern of vigorous growth rings, twenty-three in all, pale yellow outlined in rusty brown. This tree had grown to over 10 metres in its short life and the grain was straight. When I set up one of the rounds as a splitting block, I was surprised to find the grass there so bright, unlike the dun expanses most lawns showed this time of year, but then the ice that the rain washed away had been there a very long time and perhaps kept it fresh and green. The sun was unimpeded in the blue March sky, the wind was light, and the crystals around the edges of the rounds suggested there was frost in them and thus a possible ease of splitting.

Hitting a large round with the splitting maul is for me always fraught with some uncertainty. I am as certain as I can be in my footing and clearance for the fullness of the swing, since I want the impact of the maul’s blade to land if possible right where a small crack has opened across the central grains. The uncertainty is about what exactly will happen when the maul does land.

The worst is the slightly sodden dull thud that gives no promise of any progress. I pull the blade out and try again. I also dread the bounce back of the maul head like a sprung thing from the round, or even worse the misplaced hit that bounces off to the side and sends it tumbling from the block still intact. I am conscious in each swing of the shape I’m in (or not in!), the age of my limbs, and the stresses of each impact as the maul lands, the impact on me, that is, as well as on the round I am attacking, or perhaps addressing, in the hope of opening up, in cooperation with the round itself, new edges and surfaces for the flames of the woodstove to adhere to next winter and grow on.

The best of course is a first hit that has the two halves of the round falling away miraculously in an elegant split onto the ground. More usual is a series of hits that work on opening of the necessary fault line, and the question with each swing is whether this will be the right one. When that right one comes, it is a surprise and a joy. The worst of course is that stubborn and scarred warhorse that I end up putting aside in temporary (I hope!) defeat for another try on another day.

The frost was solid enough yesterday, if not for skating on the Frog Pond, for splitting all the rounds from this tree, even the stubborn and stringy ones where several limbs had branched out and the grain was twisted and difficult, and I ended up with a nice row of chunked wood stacked against another pine, a stretched out feeling in my upper body, and the hope that none of the impacts would have me regretting the activity tomorrow.

And I held the thought that maybe the still cold air in the night would be enough to solidify the ice on the Frog Pond or somewhere for today, and give us, not a river, but at least a large pond we could skate away on.