Of Ghosts and Trees

I come from a line of wood burning families. My grandfather burned wood to heat his house, my father to this day still uses wood, and I am now glad and proud to have a wood burning stove to heat my house (I'm actually lucky enough to also have a fireplace!). As anyone who has heated their house with wood knows, and as everyone might imagine, you need to gather and collect wood so you can stay warm throughout the cold months. In our family this has always taken the form of wood cutting trips out into a forested hill or mountain range, cutting up wood left over from logging jobs. It was a proud sight to see three generations of Barber men working with their entire bodies to keep the two families warm. It was a time of male bonding, a time of listening to my grandfather's stories about loggers, a time to share a simple lunch in a quiet clearing, a time to grow up and measure one's growth.

Wood cutting forays require some tools, and those tools require physical physique, skill, and experience. You need a truck to haul the wood around, a cable and/or chain to pull desired logs out from the bottom of the pile, chain saws to cut the logs to length, splitting malls and wedges to break the rounds into a size suitable for burning in a stove, and strength to use all the tools as well as gather and stack the split wood. As a child I could do no more than move the saw dust around and keep company. Occasionally I could find a small branch that my father would let me put into the truck. As I grew I was able to carry the wood and stack it. Then came the day when I was strong enough to swing the splitting mall, and I could begin chopping the wood. Eventually I learned to drive and could even drive the trucks to and around the site. The ultimate job, the one which I decided was a mark of a man was running the chainsaw to cut the logs.

Not too long after I learned to drive I was given a limited opportunity to use the chain saw, but found it was yet too heavy for me, so I resigned myself to carry it about. A few years after that I was finally strong enough to wield the tool, and proud of that day, with my father and grandfather watching on, I began cutting up my first log. There were few other opportunities I had to run the saw before my grandfather passed away. Now it is down to the two of us, until I have children of my own.

Yesterday my father and his neighbor felled a tree in my old backyard. My mother called me to invite me out to help cut up the tree. I was only too happy to help, for not only offering good exercise, it was something us men could do, and something I have not been able to do for a couple of years. Since my grandfather has died we have not gone wood cutting, mainly for lack of time, but I have always held a small dread for that day, for I knew it would be strange to cut wood without him around, for he was always there, even when he was too weak to work as hard as I could remember. There was a specific time yesterday when I was running the saw that I could imagine him sharing another story, turning it into a safety lesson so I would not injure myself (which thankfully never happened).

I will probably always be haunted by the memory of my grandfather whenever I cut wood and run the chainsaw. I was able to cross that line which in my mind solidified my identity as a man: I can run the chainsaw. It is sad that I can no longer share those times with him, but one day I will take my own son out into a forest with his grandpa and the three of us will work to keep our families warm for one more winter. I would not want to give up those memories nor that activity for all the world. It was in the forest, with a chainsaw, observed by my father, grandfather, and brother, that I feel I became a man from a boy.