Leaves drift down like snowflakes. My heavy boots sound confident on the forest floor. There is a moment of silence in kneeling, priming the pump, pulling the cord, but then the chainsaw rips to life. It hums in a frantic kind of noise. An oak tree fell in the woods not too far from the house. The base of its trunk is four feet in diameter. Maybe five? The forking branches that once rose like paths less-traveled now stretch out through the neighboring trees, a tangled mess of wood and dead, brown leaves clinging, hoping. Slowly my father and I work, from the tips of the highest branches (brought down to our height) and in towards the trunk. Deeper into the forest. He wields the chainsaw and I retrieve the fallen pieces. He gauges the tension in each branch, tests the results each cut will make, watches as each thick piece of tree clatters to the ground. I scurry to clear the stuff he has cut. It is slow work: in a few hours we have assembled a half cord of wood. We lose a chain, now twisted and missing teeth. We call it a day. There is no way we could get through that tree in an afternoon. Or two. Or ten. It is a job made for small chunks spread out over many months. Work that must be carried over. Week after week we will return to that tree, and there is no point in caring about when we finish, because all that we can do is what we can do today. But there is something comforting in this slow progress, the gradual bringing of order to a pile of chaos. We take that mass of tangled ideas and we straighten them out, put them in stacks, prepare them for some greater use. We leave clear space behind, a place where it is easy to sit and think and breathe. Where new chaos will grow and eventually cry out for order. This is the work of writing. This is the daily work of being a mom or a dad or an administrator. An executive. A short-order cook or a pastor. This is what we do: cut off what we can, and we’re careful, and we’re thorough. We create small stacks that speak to the progress we are making. And we come back, day after day, not because we must, but because this work is too important. It can not be left to rot. [photo: MarilynJane, Creative Commons]
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