Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Another grey morning. The headaches are back. I surveyed the outside, a lot of snow had melted again.
There seemed to be a lot of wood pieces exposed at first glance. I will try to go out later to have a look.
I went outside and carefully made my way through the puddles from melted ice wearing sandals, to see if there was wood out there to be had.
The answer wasn’t much.
I decided it wasn’t worth the hours of work in knee-deep wet snow to dig up more wet wood.
I chopped more inside, and this time the wood did spit at me. It was that wet. I chopped till I got a hoop full.
I turned the hoop toward the fire to help in the drying. I wouldn’t relight it until late tonight. It would be minus 10 later.
I noticed the debris pile was getting deep, but it was wet. I would need a hot fire to burn that.
Chopping inside was one of the best decisions I made this year. No waste.
Scattered around the big chopping block outside, under tons of snow, were hundreds of pounds of scraps of dry wood wasted. It was impossible to retrieve. Later I might have to try.
I chose a few large pieces of bark and laid those on still-warm coals, then covered that in cat litter provided by the girl cats.
I had hoped that would bake during the course of the day, making lighting the fire easier later on. An hour later, I noticed big smoke as I opened the stove door. It might even light itself.
End of daylight. The fire re-lit itself, sort of. I opened the door, filled my house full of smoke and coughed, a lot.
I threw a few wet logs in there for fun, one at a time and very quickly. Still looks like dense fog in the house. Later, just before bed, I will throw the few dry pieces of wood I have left and hope it will keep the house warm overnight.
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