ZEN AND THE ART

                                             OF

                                   WOOD SPLITTING

This time of year the streams remain shrouded in ice. The trout are there, but they are lethargic and in a state of semi-hibernation. From the middle of November until sometime in March I spend my time cutting, splitting and stacking logs for the woodstove; that is, when I’m not plowing the snow off the long dirt drive that runs from the road to our house.

I could pay Don from the Auto Shop to do the plowing and we can heat our home with oil, but the effort to clear the drive and keep the stove full is an excuse to spend time outdoors, which keeps me active and sane throughout the winter and provides the illusion of self-sufficiency.

By the third week in February, the banks of snow have melted along the driveway and on either side of the walk leading into the house. Some hard pack remains in those places under trees or in the lee of the out-buildings scattered around the twelve acres surrounding our home.

My jeans bear oil stains that Trish has been unable to remove. The strings from the frayed bottoms trail behind the rubber heels of my felt-packed Sorels like a dry fly reeled against the current. The fingers of my inexpensive work gloves are worn through in a few places, and I have wrapped them with duct tape to keep the lining from falling out.

This morning, I am wearing a heavy shirt with a stiff canvas exterior. The words Oquossoc Marine are stitched in black across the front of my cap, the letters rising upward through a grease stain like boulders in a lake around which smallmouth bass might school.

I walk the short distance across the yard to a small shed, the lawn crunching under my boots. The morning frost glistens like tiny diamonds sprinkled among the blades of matted grass as the sun edges over the line of spruce to reveal a flawless blue sky.

I lift the latch and open the door. The smell of grease and oil hangs in the cold stillness. I reach past the chainsaw and grab the maul from the corner of the shed, walking back outside, past the lean-to, which contains the remains of two cords of stove-wood. By this time of year, much of the wood has been used to heat our home. The pieces that remain are stacked against the back wall, some littering the floor, a few wedged into the corners.

 The sound of my chainsaw fills the air throughout November and December as I down trees, hauling them from the woodlot, across the earthen dam of our little pond and cutting them into stove-sized pieces. I spend the remainder of the winter splitting the twelve-inch logs, allowing them to season in the open air throughout spring and summer until the following fall when I stack them, row upon row, under the eave of the empty lean-to and begin the process all over again.

When I was younger, I split wood from morning until three or four in the afternoon, breaking only for lunch, a mountain of stove-wood rising quickly, sometimes complete by the end of December, leaving the remainder of the winter for feeding birds, exploring the woods, tying flies. These days, I wear a back brace and work for no more than three hours a day, taking an entire winter of weekends to raise my mountain of split wood.

I can rent a gas-powered log-splitter and form the pile of logs in days instead of months, but where is the honor in that? No, I prefer this six-pound maul, the one I now cradle in my hands; the same maul I have used to create twenty winters’ worth of firewood. Once, I replaced the shaft, when an errant blow splintered it against the side of a stump, only later learning a trick used by hockey players to protect their sticks -- duct tape wrapped around the base of the blade.

I stop at the three chopping blocks frozen to the ground in front of the rising summit of wood, chinks and grooves cut into the edges of each stump wherever the maul’s sharp blade has powered through a log. The bark has fallen away, lying in shreds, mixed into sawdust with pieces of kindling, wood chips, shavings and twigs, creating a ligneous gazpacho.

On either side lies a pile of logs, mostly sugar maple, white oak, shagbark hickory; the type of hardwood that splits easily and burns slowly, providing an efficient source of heat for the woodstove. There is a smaller amount of soft wood that is stringy, more difficult to split and faster burning like poplar, tulip and ash.

I like the smell of the resin, the feeling of the sawdust, spongy under my boots, the maul, familiar in my hands, but it is the sight of the growing mountain that I most enjoy, with its base of split log, ridges of sticks and crags of twisted branch.

 Feet spread apart, my left hand grasping the wooden handle of the maul near its bottom, my right holding it around the base, I take pleasure in the power that spreads from my legs up through my shoulders and down through my arms, the motion of the heavy blade as it swings through the air, the crack of the log as it splits in two. After twenty minutes, I unbutton the canvas shirt, remove the baseball cap and run a hand through my thinning hair.

A few feet from the woodpile is an ironwood tree. From its lower branch hangs a tube feeder filled with sunflower chips. A chickadee flits among the branches, landing on the metal rung of the feeder, cocking its head sideways, its black eye looking like a tiny plastic bead. As the bird flies off with a seed, a titmouse appears with its gray breast feathers puffed outward, a little dun-colored pompadour shooting up as it chirps a complaint.

I swing the maul down, the blade striking off center. A quarter of the log splits away while the remaining piece falls over on its side. While the titmouse picks a seed from the feeder, two goldfinches and a nuthatch impatiently chatter in the branches of the ironwood.

Clouds have moved in from the east and without the sun there is a chill in the air. Even so, I’m sweating. I hang the outer shirt from a nail hammered into the side of the woodshed and roll up the long sleeves of my tee shirt.

The next swing of the maul fails to split the log. Aiming for a fracture, I try again, causing a chunk of wood to fly end over end across the frozen ground.

I develop a rhythm -- bend, pick up a log, split. Bend, pick up a log and split. There is ample time for reflection. Today, I fancy myself an aging samurai, past my prime, without a lord to follow or battle to fight, but still able to wield a weapon with grace and skill. After a while, I stoop down, tossing the scattered pieces toward the top of the pile, the mountain growing high under the ashen clouds.

Sometime during the second hour snow begins to fall. I remove the canvas shirt from the nail and slip it back on.

The flakes are light, dry. They settle on my shoulders, the chopping blocks and woodpile, covering the branches of the ironwood tree, sticking to the ground like tiny particles of Styrofoam.

The birds are now darting back and forth grabbing seeds without hesitation from the feeder. In the stillness of the afternoon, I hear the flutter of their wings.

Robert J. Romano, Jr.                          November 2006

Forgotten Trout  

Looking up at the hemlocks, one would never guess that they are dying. These trees, many over seventy feet tall, are plagued by the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid, an exotic pest infesting many hemlock stands throughout the East Coast. I suppose I should be grateful that it has been a slow process, each season a few more trees falling to the forest floor, others losing their needles. The shade cast by this forest insures that the temperature of the little stream that runs through it remains cool. Even in high summer there are beads of water on the rocks and lichen.

The raucous sound of the current grows louder as my wading boots leave indentations in the thick layer of moss that has spread across the bank of the brook. I can almost grab the humidity with my hand.

These waters have not been stocked since the early nineteen-eighties. Since then, the descendents of those dull-witted, hatchery-bred fish have developed into a strain of cagey, wild brook trout, their sides a riot of blue and yellow circles, some with blood red dots in the center.

The fish of the little stream lack the lighter hues found in brookies of other waters. Instead, their backs are uniformly black. I like to think that it is because they spend their hidden lives under the shadows of the hemlock forest. I know they are doomed to perish without the dense shade provided by the trees, the stream no longer able to maintain the lower temperatures necessary for their survival. It is just a matter of time.

Standing here in the uncertain light, my calves resist the pull of the current. I flip a Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear wet fly, its tinsel worn, body ragged, toward a small glide along the edge of the far bank. For a moment the fly bobs on the surface. A flash of jaw appears and I can feel hook bite sinew, but then the trout is gone, my line slack.

The stream slips nearly unnoticed into the Delaware River, only seven miles long from its primary source, a small pond found along a ridge of the Kittatinny Mountains. The blueberry bushes that spread down to the water’s edge make it difficult to hike around the pond’s shoreline. Farther back, scrub oak, white pine and Norwegian spruce have grown close together. Although gnats, black flies and mosquitoes are considered a bother, it’s the ticks that can be a real worry. Rumor has it that the rattlesnakes here are as big as your fear will allow.

The brook descends from the pond for a short distance, its depth no more than inches, sliding around boulders lush with moss until it passes under a single-lane macadam road. A few hundred yards downstream a second, smaller rill trickles down out of the east to join it. A quarter-mile from the road, runoff from the hills that rise up along the brook’s western flank descends through a ravine, adding more volume whenever it rains. As the gradient increases, riffles are interspersed with plunge pools that are formed wherever the current slices around or over larger rocks, fallen limbs and other debris. The depth in some places is now two and even three feet.

I am an angler, a fly fisher to be more specific, and so I have always had a fondness for moving water, can’t help but look over each bridge I cross, stop by every rivulet, gully or ditch. Most fishermen might not think of casting their lures here, preferring the certainty of bigger fish in the many put-and-take rivers and lakes that are within a few minutes’ drive. But I have discovered a secret under the deep shade of the hemlocks, something more than bracken and bone. Beyond the mid point of my own life’s journey, I have found that I can lie suspended in place and time, however briefly, with yesterday forgotten, tomorrow of no concern. It is for this reason, that these woods, this stream draws me back to cast my flies to forgotten trout for as long as a dying forest will cast its shadows.

I climb from the brook and lean on a hemlock. The trunk is strong although many of the tree’s needles have turned gray. A few feet downstream, a fingerling turns to capture a caddis larva dislodged by my wading boot.                          

Robert J. Romano, Jr.                                August 2004