Splitter

Five weeks ago when I could have been quietly fretting about the new job I was due to start aMonda', my mate Chris (tree-surgeon sans peur et sans reproche) announced that it was time to fell out the big standing-dead cypress at my out-law's place on the South coast.  It was a short January day but that old tree rained down in chunks and I schlepped them into heaps until it was too dark to see.  Today being my first opportunity to get down South to tidy up, in the dark of dawn I found my trusty splitting maul and set off for another day's work.  In splitting logs practical physics meets zen master.  Each log is a puzzle that can be solved by a critical insight more often than by brute force.  You are allowed a moment of smugness before you reach for the next log, and in a short time you have to move your anvil because it is being buried by product.  So now we have a quarter-cord of blocks, or maybe more, stacked up a-drying and I feel fine.