Splitting Wood

I have always had a need to stay busy. As a young boy, I twiddled with anything within reach if I wasn’t provided with something to occupy my time. I thought about this while loading up rounds of wood at the cabin to haul home for splitting.

During my preteen and teenage years, I spent considerable time at my father’s cabin in the steep and heavily wooded mountains outside of Plains, Montana. Alongside the cabin sat a stack of rounds—typically tamarack, which grew with a straight grain and split nicely. Nearby, you would find a large round, upright on the ground, which served as the block for splitting firewood. Generally, an axe could be found with its blade sunk down into the top block, so the handle extended out for easy reach. This is where I kept busy in those years: splitting rounds into the narrow chunks required for the wood-burning cookstove used for both cooking and heating the cabin.

I loved splitting firewood with an axe. I found deep satisfaction in driving the axe down through the heart of a cordwood length and watching the wood snap into two neat halves, emitting a sharp tree-scent as it did so. I enjoyed listening to the echoes of the axe-fall, tossed from tree to tree in the surrounding forest.

Split Firewood

—Mitchell Hegman