After the big wind storm last fall and all the downed trees I thought it was time for me to learn how to buck a tree and use a chainsaw properly. I bought the safety gear—the protective chaps, the integrated helmet with ear protection and face shield, the gloves—and started watching instructional videos. And then I decided no way. I’d used chainsaws enough to understand how frustrating they can be. And I knew myself, and didn’t think it would end well.

But it’s hard to see all this free wood there for the taking. There is nothing more satisfying than free wood. Splitting it, chucking it in a wheelbarrow, stacking it. I love the look of our woodpiles in the backyard because of what they represent: comfort and security. I feel like I’m providing. I may not be like the men in those instructional videos: I’m not good with motorized equipment, I’m brutish and lack patience and technique, but I like to provide. It’s my love language.

Yesterday I pressure washed the patio—the patio that extends from the back of our house around the side, it’s what they call “stamped,” which I never understood, and when you pressure wash something you get a new appreciation for its surface area, its true size. It feels like a dental cleaning, the teeth coated in black lichen, algae and fungus. It takes me about five hours. And then I have to go back and touch it up.

I only do it once a year but every time it reminds me of a smell from the amusement park I went to as a kid, Dorney Park: one of those rollercoaster-type rides that ended with a big splash, in water. The little cars we squeezed into were always a bit wet and smelled just like that pressure-washed lichen smell. Both dirty and clean, more on the dirty side.

Holding a pressurized gun bent over all afternoon does strange things to your body. But like the woodpile you get the benefit of seeing your hard work each time you look out the window. And it’s nothing Dawn would likely ever do, it’s not something I’d subject Charlotte to either. Which isn’t fair, because if I’d had a son he would have been out there with the instructions and me telling him how to start it. So instead I provide. And I tell myself we’ve got enough wood already. I can learn to buck a tree another day.

Though there is nothing more studly than watching guys in chaps with harnesses mount a large tree and bear down on it with saws, I’m not that kind of man. I’m better in the kitchen.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, pacific northwest