So, early yesterday, I chopped away at a log -- kindly provided by organizer Nakri Dao of Lynn -- as splinters showered in the late-fall chill. I never managed to split the log, or even make it halfway through. But it felt good to raise and lower the yellow-handled axe. Every now and then the blade would get stuck and I had to pry it loose.
Chopping wood, they say, is good for your upper body. You get to lift and lower the weight of the axe, and you descend into a squat position for the actual chop. I believe it is also good to be out in nature, and to engage in work that might also benefit the environment, chopping wood that needs to be chopped. Fellow Spahten Joe Armstrong of Lynn once told me of a log so big it required six or seven people to clear it from the trail and roll it up Burrill Hill to the Stone Tower.
Wood chopping figures big in life and literature, too. Leave it to Robert Frost to actually know, in "Two Tramps in Mud Time," what kind of wood he was toiling away at -- "Good blocks of oak it was I split, As large around as the chopping block." And last Monday, when I went to the Topsfield Fair with Laura and her mother, the groups performing at the Grandstand included the Axe Women Loggers of Maine. (We caught the end of the show.)
The Spahtens do many kinds of workouts at Stone Tower -- 450-pound tire flips, rope climbs and spear throws. But because of its connections to the earth, chopping wood just might be my favorite.
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