Renewal

Last Wednesday I drove home from the office, thinking about the 7:30pm meeting for which I would be returning to work. Thinking, "At least it will still be light enough that slogging out of the house to the car to leave for work for a second time today won't feel quite so bleak." 

I let the dogs out and set about the painstaking task of bringing in a few armloads of firewood. 

Husband established our plan for firewood use: We use the wood from the pile closest to the house and work toward the back, thus taking the oldest and driest wood first. When a new delivery comes, it will be stacked at the front, and then we'll work from the part of the stockpile that is farthest from the house, letting the new stuff age until satisfactory cracks appear, indicating sufficient curing not to gunk up the chimney.

Enough of the oldest wood has been used now that access to the firewood requires me to walk over the wooden pallets that supported the ABB (already-been-burned) fuel. Those pallets are covered with curved shells of fallen bark. Some of the pallets' boards are broken, and some are a little weak . . .  

. . . strong enough to support an evenly distributed weight of firewood but perhaps not reliably structurally sound enough to support the weight of (even very large) feet with concentrated vertical weight atop them.  I step carefully, aiming for the thickest piles of bark, since they distribute my weight over the greatest area of palletage. I place my feet, whenever possible, where the top boards intersect with their supporting joists. I load up my arms with three, four, sometimes five woodstove-size logs and turn, a degree at a time, to return over the pallets to the solid ground of the driveway, thence to the front porch. 

Always, at some point during my travels, I wonder why I didn't slip my cell phone into my pocket . . . just in case I were to break through and do injury to myself.

You think you know what's coming, don't you?

I had completed one successful gathering and was heading back for more wood when I heard...
What?
What was that?
...did I hear...?
Could it be?


I stopped, turned, scanned the treetops.
Far over across the road, in the top of a tree . . . yes! A red-winged blackbird, in his characteristic hunchbacked posture. 
Calling Okaleeeee! Okaleeeeee!   
(The call sounds, to me, like SweeeetBrrrrrrrrrrr, SweeeetBrrrrrrrrrrr, but the experts say that what I'm hearing is "Okalee.")

from Northwest Ohio Nature.com

The red-winged blackbirds are back. 
The blackbirds are back!
Good weather is coming.
My pallet-stepping grew more confident and the logs grew lighter as I chose hunks of it to swing, one-handed, up into the load in my left arm.


On Thursday morning I passed a group of three or four crows, one with a tangle of dry grass in its beak: nest-building!
The male woodpeckers are drumming, drumming, advertising for potential females the strength of their beaks. 


It will be weeks before the woodshed becomes an unimportant feature of my day-to-day life. But oh! it's coming!
Spring is coming.


The little birds have told me.