In November, the woodlot beckons.

In November, my woodlot beckons… Ice forms along the edge of the brook. Glossy dark hemlocks contrast with slate gray hardwoods. The woods reveal features hidden by leaves or under snow for the rest of the year: skeletal limbs, stonewalls, ledges, swamps and open water glinting in the spare, slanting sunlight.

The forest is hushed. Only a blue jay’s rowdy taunts and the rustle of a chipmunk in dry leaves breaks the silence in the woods… until I start my chainsaw.

November is custom-made for cutting wood: no humidity or sweating, no biting insects, no wallowing in snow. It’s my traditional season for backyard logging. Cold weather triggers an instinctive impulse to cut wood like a beaver. Soon deep snow and bitter cold will force me indoors where I’ll measure winter’s progress by the steady depletion of the woodpile.

Early morning air has a metallic, deer-rifle taste. By noon, it’s warm enough to work without gloves. Chainsaw exhaust and pine pitch permeate my flannel shirt, woodchips fill my pant cuffs.

When culling firewood from the forest, I’m shaping the composition of the woods for decades to come. Thinning improves growing conditions for trees I leave behind. The simplistic garden analogy is to grow quality timber, forests should be “weeded and thinned like a bed of carrots.”
But forests can’t be managed like carrots: the aesthetic feels more like sculpting than painting by numbers.

Early sunset demands efficiency and concentration on the task at hand. At dusk, frost settles in the valley. I shut-down the saw, gather tools and stride toward the warm glow of the back porch light. Stars of familiar winter constellations rise in the east.