Every time I do it, it leaves me feeling energized, vibrant, relaxed, and renewed. I think I should do it again, and more frequently. The tricky part has been getting the supplies and finding the time to do it.
I am not talking about a beach vacation, a walk in the woods, or a dinner and a movie.
I am talking about splitting wood.
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| President Reagan (Credit: culbreath.wordpress.com) |
I discovered the joys of splitting wood after I moved into my current home, which has a wood burning fireplace and a home heating wood stove. The previous owner had left a pile of seasoned wood in the backyard. So, when the first snowstorm hit and the heat pump couldn't keep up, I decided to light up the fireplace. It was grunt work, hauling the firewood in while keeping the critters that call it their home, out. Some of the pests will hitch a hike inside regardless and show up later at the dinner table. To get the fire going isn't any easier either. The first attempts resulted in a whole lot of smoke, but no fire. The smoke billowed into the family room and spread into the kitchen and then upstairs like a purposeful apparition. The smoke alarm triggered with deafening screeches, drawing howls of protest from my wife and kids. I found out I hadn't opened the damper. After I managed to get the fire going and declared “mission accomplished,” the fire died, leaving embers glowing faintly in the updraft.
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| (Credit: ta.wikipedia.org) |
But I wasn’t discouraged. Not after having witnessed in my younger days far tougher struggles to gather the firewood, to ensure a dry stack ready to light up day in day out, and to keep the kitchen fire burning battling the basic chemistry of combustion—all done by ladies of the house. Cooking was done on the aduppu, a mud oven made out of a tripod of bricks surrounding a shallow fire pit. The haves had it on a counter, where one could wage the battle standing up. The have-nots had it on the floor, a most uneasy position to breath oxygen into the dying coals, even with the aid of a kuzhal (pipe). How the burden of firing up this contraption many times a day fell on the ladies of the house, I do not understand. But they played deftly the hand they were dealt and we boys supplied the extra help they direly needed.
Chopping tree branches for firewood was out of the question, let alone felling a whole tree for the purpose. The market for timber was robust. Any decent tree in the compound boosted your net worth. So much so, a law on the books required homeowners to register valuable trees like teak and mahogany with the Panchayat (a local government entity synonymous with grassroots corruption), not that anyone ever did. No wonder it came as a shock to my dad that you have to pay to cut and remove trees in America. When he visited me in Maryland, he stood outside surveying my yard. His first question will sound familiar to anyone who has hosted a visitor from Kerala, looking puzzled by the lack of clearly demarcated boundaries between adjacent houses.
“Ithu ethra sthalandu?” (How much land do you have?)
And then, resting his palm on the giant poplar in my backyard, with evident anticipation, “Ee marathinu enthu kittum?” (How much is this tree worth?)
If you can’t chop trees or branches for firewood, what do you do to operate the aduppu? Well, you wait for the trees to shed deadwood and you pick it up, store it, and use it. A whole profession grew around collecting and selling deadwood. Chothikal (carriers) were women who went into the forest to gather firewood and returned with a long, neatly tied bundle of twigs and branches, which they carried on their head cushioning it on a curled up pad of clothing. Their hips swayed in unison as they held the bundles with their upraised hands and marched delicately on rock-strewn unpaved roads to reach the market.
Gathering deadwood was a year round chore at our home. A section of the kayyala (shed) was cordoned off to store it. Cobras and kraits saw this an opportune habitat occasionally, making retrieval difficult—the only time menfolk came out to inspect the proceedings, perhaps afraid that their next meal might be in jeopardy.
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| Tools: Chain Saw, Maul, Gloves, Safety Glasses, Steel Toe Boots |
Ensuring a steady supply of firewood, though, was only the first step. It had to be cut into a usable form to fit the oven. A coconut patta (leaf stalk) cannot be stuffed into the oven without being split. And long tree branches had to be cut to size. Hard labor, but easy enough if you have functioning equipment—the vettukathi (machete) and the mazhu (ax). Kerala might have originated when Parashuraman threw a mazhu from the mountaintop and the murderous Marxists may prefer the vettukathi to keep their opponents at bay, but such history was no help in getting a working version of these tools in our household. The machete always had a loose handle and the ax a blunt head, a nifty combination that begot danger and frustration, not split firewood.
While the aduppu (oven) had simplicity and reliance on renewable fuel going for it, user friendly it wasn’t. Half the material put into it for combustion returned as soot, which blackened not just the pots but the entire kitchen. Soot collected on cobwebs which hung in long strands like a caveman's adornments, appropriate because the kitchen increasingly resembled a foggy cavern. Thick gray smoke billowed out leaving the cook coughing and teary-eyed. The smoke rose and spread everywhere imparting a woody, earthy ambiance to the mornings and evenings.
But if the travails were all that was, I don’t think I would have grown to enjoy splitting wood, stacking the logs, and hauling them in the thick of winter to light up the fireplace. The resourcefulness with which the ladies ran the kitchen combating cobras and compromised equipment is certainly an inspiration. Beyond that, fire was an all-purpose solution for many things, including the source of illumination come nightfall, and as children, this meant plenty of opportunities to play with fire, literally.
As dusk settles, a nilavilakku (ceremonial lamp) is lit and brought to the foyer and placed on the floor facing west. Children sit legs crossed to recite evening prayers. All is quiet except for the ritualistic chanting when the adults are around. The moment the adults disappear, all discipline and devotion are abandoned. The kids draw out eerkili (slender midribs of coconut leaflets) from the broom, dip their tips in the oil in the lamp, and light them from the flame. Then we whirl them around in circles creating instant glowing art. An occasional sword fight with the eerkili erupts. Often, one of the kids gets poked with the burning end, putting a quick end to the adventure as the mischief maker gets banished to the corner.
And then there were the bonfires lit in the chilly mornings of Dhanu masam (a winter month) at my friend Krishnan's yard adjoining the Kurumali Puzha (river). All types of refuse from coconut and arecanut palms would be thrown into the fire, causing the flames to leap into the air with an explosive crackle. On one such morning, as a gentle breeze spread the smoke in large plumes across the yard, we caught Krishnan’s dad slowly making his way toward us with a towel thrown around his neck. In the early dawn hours with the blanket of smoke whirling around him, he resembled Amitabh Bachchan chasing Rekha in slow motion in Silsila.
Juxtaposed with the bygone troubles of finding the firewood and fueling the aduppu, the present day work of splitting wood, stacking logs, and firing up the hearth is a cakewalk. Wood is plenty and practically free; your neighbors will be grateful if you haul it away from their yard. The logs are “rounds,” evenly cut to fit the fireplace. Tools are inexpensive, sturdy, and rarely malfunction. My six-pound wood-splitting maul works as well today as when I bought it in 2010. Besides, now it is a leisure activity, a choice, not a requirement forced upon you. Nobody is telling me, “Jaya, aa patta onnu vetti vekku,” (Jay, go split those stalks,) or “Da poyi kayyalennu korachu veragu eduthonduvaa,” (Go get some wood from the shed,) while friends are fidgeting at the gate on their way to the evening swim in the river.
There are benefits to splitting wood—the workout, a lower heating bill. But these are beside the point and feeble sources of motivation. If you are prodded by these considerations, splitting becomes work, hardly something to look forward to after a dreary day at the desk job. The true draw is the sublime sense of connecting with nature and immersing in an activity that must have originated when our ancestors lighted that first fire. There’s nothing like the freedom of stepping out into the yard on a breezy summer evening, placing a log of wood on a chopping block, swinging the maul, and getting a clean cut right down the middle.
Despite the suggestive violence—cutting tools, blunt force, cracking noise—splitting wood has a calming, meditative quality. The task is simple, the mind focused and clear. Your skill and technique improve with time. And stacking the logs offers an outlet for some experimental art.
I wheel in the dry logs on a cold winter evening and start up the fire. The wood hisses and crackles as it burns, infusing a smoky earthen flavor to the air. Long bright flames leap upward spreading a gentle warmth that seeps across the room. As I watch the logs burn down into coals and coals to ashes, the end of a cycle in the eternal rhythm of nature, I think of the great Richard Feynman’s words:
Now let’s get out and split some wood. As I said, it’s sure to leave you feeling energized, vibrant, relaxed and renewed.
