Debris Of Winter

Day 192: Two and a half hours of backbreaking labor, and at last the debris left behind by winter's storms is burned away to ash. Backbreaking, but it is work I love, or so I tell myself at the onset. By the tenth trip, staggering the distance of a long and narrow third of an acre with a pitchfork heavily laden with fir boughs, I am not so sure. When the blisters begin to rise through the holes in my tattered leather work gloves, I am less than certain.

It is an annual task, and I am not getting any younger, but when the first bright, warm days of Spring make themselves felt, it is a chore I welcome (more or less). I speak to the fire and smoke ("They say smoke follows beauty, so whyinhell are you always in my eyes?") and I inhale, rather unavoidably, the sweet scent of volatilizing pitch and charring needles. It lingers in my hair so densely that I can enjoy it even after a thorough shower, fills my sinuses with particles which will have me sneezing black for days, and yet I love the scent.

So too I love the crackle and snap of the fire, the leaping flames (well, once I get them going). It amuses me to feed ten-foot branches as thick as my forearm into the blaze, half-lifing each length into an ever-narrowing span. "Making little ones out of big ones," I remind the limbs. "Ain'tchew burnt in two yet?"

But I am not getting any younger. I think I mentioned that. Tomorrow morning, I will pay for my playing with fire today. I will rise before dawn, sniff the lingering smoke odor in my pillow and briefly, oh so briefly will consider whether there's any more yard waste needing to be burned. And then I'll try to shift out of bed and be glad it's over until next year