Wood for the Winter

The call went out the night before for help stacking firewood under Lodge 6. At the appointed hour of 10:00 am on a bright and beautiful Saturday morning, approximately 20 people showed up at the site to help with what has to be one of the most tedious, but in some strange way, exhilarating jobs at Holden Village...that of log-by-log transfer of firewood into the safekeeping of the underbelly of a facility that houses one of Holden's wood-burning furnaces.

This is the sight that greeted us when we arrived for our "service project." The stack of wood extended nearly the length of the lodge, was shoulder high on me, and was about 5-6 feet wide...a lot of wood. Holden utilizes (in environmentally friendly ways) the resources at hand for its winter heat source. If you check your bill for winter heating oil, then you will understand how prohibitive the cost would be to heat with any petroleum-based fuel that would have to be brought up the lake and up the mountain and into the wilderness...enough oil to heat the buildings that remain open in the winter. Holden would simply have to close down in the winter.

Some of those who showed up for this project were paying guests. Others were volunteers who temporarily left their other jobs in the village in order to help out with this task and then went back to their assigned work area when all the wood was off the ground and inside the building. Two of Holden's three directors helped as well. (The third director was driving the bus down to the lake taking guests to meet the boat.)

The simplicity of this task serves as both its main attraction and its chief liability. You line up, wood pile on the outside to wood stack within the building, and one log at a time, you pass it hand to hand. It is mind-numbing repetition but leaves you free to talk and chatter, visit with your neighbor in the line, pass the time in a pleasantries while you perform a necessary job. On the down side, it is physically demanding. You may not realize this while you are stacking the wood. You will realize it the next day no matter how much ibuprofen you took the night before.

As the wood pile diminishes, its distance from the door to the inside increases. The line stretches out until you are forced to extend a log at arm's length to the next person in line. If reinforcements fail to arrive, you may have to play "Tossie" and literally toss the log to the next person. Tossie requires the utmost in concentration and focus, on your part and on the part of the person standing next to you in line. There are matters of trust as well. One small unheeded distraction and you have a log in your face. (It is not a pretty sight.)

Inside the building, the stackers work tirelessly and often in cramped positions, to put every log in place. Here it will stay until it is used during the winter. And there is another job connected with this wood...that of keeping the wood-burning furnaces stoked. And all Holden volunteers are assigned to a Stoking Schedule. I have heard about it, but do not know the details. Maybe they keep the details from us lest we leave before the schedule is released. I am trying to imagine getting out of a warm bed and making my way through the snow to the site of a furnace at 2:00 am...there is a 2:00 am stoking.

This particular wood pile took about an hour and a half to be transferred from the pile outside to the wood stacks within.