East Pole Journal March 30, 2020: Weather leaves a gift

A wind-blown gift.

Could there be anything more beautiful than Venus leading a crescent moon across a clear night sky? Just asking.

Stormy weather

Saturday I posted a picture on facebook of snow blowing off the summit of Denali in a huge wind storm. By Sunday it had progressed over here and we've had quite a windstorm for going on two days now, although it did let up a little today. Sunday it took the soup out of me and I didn't get much done, but I did take a run around the property to see if any trees had blown down. Turned out the storm did leave me a gift, a huge spruce blew down over the main trail in the public area adjacent to my property. Someone had cut a section out to clear the trail but left most of the tree. Today I went over there and cut about 15 feet of it into wood stove lengths and hauled them home. More about that later.

That woodpile

Today I dressed  better for the wind and it didn't blow nearly as hard as it had the day before. I

That storm of blowing snow on Denali.

put in some good time on the big birch I have been working over for what seems forever at this point. I can see the end of it in the next couple of days and then I have to start on another one. There's another tall birch not quite as big close by, like within 20 feet of where I've working now and close to my trail. I can see dead branches on it and when the wind gets it waving, I can hear it cracking internally. I have to keep my eye on it in case it decides to fall my way.  It is about ready to fall on its own with a little help from the wind and might save me the most dangerous part of this process, the actual felling of the tree. If not, I will take it down by the end of the week and once that's cut split and stacked I will have next winter's supply.

Pleasure and pain

It's amazing the differences in wood. The birch I'm working with is a dense hardwood. That's preferred to spruce because it burns longer and slower and still generates as much or more heat as the lighter spruce. It also makes the birch tougher and heavier. I have no doubt some of the sections I'm moving around weigh well more than 50 pounds. The bigger ones I can't split even with an 18-pound maul. I have to cut them vertically into smaller pieces with the chainsaw first, and sometimes even have to cut those sections into smaller ones before I can split them. They can be gnarly in the true sense of the word rather than the surfer sense. That also makes them tougher to split.

So, here's the "more later"

That said, as I was quitting for the day, I looked at this newly obtained spruce and though I was about worn out I thought I'd take a couple of licks at one just to see how it goes. These are maybe 10 to 12 inches in diameter. The first one split so easily — and with the smaller maul — I tried another. Long story short, it was so easy and kind of fun and I split the whole bunch before I quit. That's the pile in the picture. Lots of fire starting kindling for the next year now.

The East Pole Journal