Back when I lived in Ghost Town in Oakland, we used to drive the Doomsmobile to this underpass nearby where loggers would dump huge chunks of redwood, and you were free to take as much as you’d like. And there was a gas-powered splitter there you could use. We’d split a bunch of the stuff and then fill the back seats and trunk with as much wood as we could carry, then take it home and split the chunks down further into smaller pieces. Later, we’d have bonfires at our place that everyone in the neighborhood would come to.
Anyway, not only do I miss that sort of thing, but I also just miss having the opportunity to split wood. I used to own this heavy maul and my cousin and I would wake up and make black coffee and then go out back and split logs all morning. It’s such a satisfying thing to do. It’s also like a full-body workout, and downright meditative even. Man, I’ll tell you what . . . I could sit there and split logs all the livelong day. If I ever own land, the first thing I’ll do is create a bonfire pit and set aside a bunch of logs to split. For god’s sake, I’d never need anything again for the rest of my life.
(BONUS: When I was looking for these pictures, I found some from a few days later when I took Laura to see the Pacific Ocean. She’d never seen any ocean before in her whole life. I don’t know, that was a really nice day. We used to have a lot of those back then . . .)
