Every fall, around the St. George Marathon, my dad and I get together to do something that is a bit outside of the mainstream, even for small town Utah. It’s not necessarily fun. It’s definitely not necessary, but it’s what we do. We meet before the sun rises. Load up the necessary tools and head into the woods. This particular activity has been happening up past Enterprise Reservoir for the past few years. There is a burn area up there and we venture out, find some god-awful section and then spend the next 3-5 hours toting 15 pound chainsaws around felling trees and loading them into the trailer/truck.
I think this one activity, is the closest I will know what it feels like to be a mother. Lugging around a 15 pound object and trying to control it all day long is exhausting. When we stop for lunch, our muscles begin to cool and the aches and pains of the work settle in. Then we have to muster the motivation to get back up, pick up the saw and continue until we are done.
I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit nervous leading up to today’s wood-getting. My dad can rock it all day long, most of the time he leaves me in the dust. As I mentioned, this isn’t easy. But even with all the aches, pains, the giant bump on my head, my tired hands, destroyed skin and the plugged shower due to the saw dust being washed off, it’s one of my favorite days of the year.
Just gettin’ some wood with my dad.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with national parks. They tend to be some of the most beautiful places on earth, yet they are so Disneyfied that any schmoe in a car can make it to see the “Narrows,” even if they only hike to the bottom and the snap a photo only to venture back out to Springdale for a beer and pizza. They had their adventure, they saw Zion.
Before KB and I signed that contractual agreement for a tax benefit called marriage, we went to Seattle for her and now, my nephew’s wedding. There was a lot of drinking that took place which was probably good because I tend to get anxious with more than one Berglund at a time. And I had the whole damn family, plus some extended. One evening we pretty much shut down the hotel bar. This was after the ceremony. There was good times had. I was told that I spent the evening conversing with another nephew, not the one getting hitched, in Spanish as he had lived in Spain for a semester. I later learned he didn’t understand anything I said. But damn we had a great conversation.
The next morning, we managed to drag our sorry asses out of bed. We had planned on hiking to a beautiful waterfall and enjoying it for the morning. There were Bloody Maries to be had, breakfast turned into brunch, but eventually we got everyone into the cars and headed out. We arrived in this canyon. Stumbled out of our cars and walked about 100 yards to the edge to look off and see this waterfall. It was spectacular, except for all the people. The walk over to the edge was groomed, in places it had some boardwalk. It was a pretty fucking easy hike. Regardless, we got to see our waterfall and then we went to lunch and got some more beer.
I had my saw vertical to the ground. The trunk of this fucking tree was huge, way bigger than my chainsaw’s bar. This means that I had to cut, remove saw, cut, remove saw, cut, remove saw, cut, until I had made it successfully around the tree to then not yell timber (they only do that in movies) and watch the tree fall, crashing to the ground with branches flailing in all different directions.
At one of the “remove saw” points, I stood up with a jerk and caught myself right in the head with a branch. It just about knocked me out. I cursed under the noise of my saw. Then I whipped right around and cut the damn thing off of the tree. That tree is now in my backyard waiting to heat my house this winter. I win.
The nephew that I had spent the entire evening chatting up in Spanish, was so hung over I was worried he would fall over the edge, but he made it. His mother was outfitted in those cheap flip-flops that you would expect to disintegrate at any moment. She made it. Frankly, there were so many God Damn people that made it, that that amazing waterfall was nothing more than a painting on the wall of a greasy spoon in Southern Wyoming. It may as well have been a picture of a dude with an American Flag tattooed on both arms.
The entire time I was enjoying that waterfall, I was thinking, this is cheap. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. There should be a requisite hike, a challenge to see that which is beautiful. Without the effort, the thing of beauty is cheapened and anybody with a hangover and shitty flip flops can just fall out of their car and see that which should be savored. That which should take hours to arrive at. It’s not right.
I have a furnace. Dave Amodt installed a new one for me just over a year ago. Apparently some of my rantings could be blamed on the old one as it was cracked and leaking shit that I shouldn’t be breathing into my house. I don’t need to heat my house with wood. My father, yea, he’s got a furnace too. There is no physical need for us to venture into the woods with 15 pounds saws and spend the day working harder than we do all year. No, we have no real reason to do this.
However, and this is a big However, it’s not a however you use simply to attach or continue a thought. It’s a however that can change your life. It’s one of those words that should be used sparingly, so that when you have the moment, much like this one, to use it, it means something. However, we need to go get wood every. fucking. year. It’s a time for my dad and I to spend together. We don’t get to talk. We don’t get to “enjoy” margaritas on a beach. We enjoy the fact that our labor, the sweat of our brow, will be heating our houses all fucking winter long.
Some things can’t be enjoyed unless they are difficult. Unless there is some obstacle to overcome, the end result can seem superfluous and without beauty. Much like that waterfall that sat at the end of a road that was reached simply by burning some fossil fuels that had nothing to do with us. Life is not worth living if it isn’t hard. Some things should, by nature, be difficult to attain.
That’s what makes life beautiful.
P. L. and R.