I chopped wood yesterday. I chopped wood the day before, too. I don’t chop wood because I have to, but I chop wood because I like to. It makes me feel productive, and I feel like it’s a good bit of exercise as well, but more on that some other day. I chop the wood because I like it, and because the stack of wood on my front porch is growing handsomely and steadily, towering so high now that I have to throw the wood to the top, hoping that the throw is accurate and the stack doesn’t wobble or waiver. This stack is very nice, and it’s impressive. But soon, the stack will no longer grow, and wood that I steal from it to be burned or stored inside will not be replaced. That’s because chopping wood is a winter activity, and though today it looks like winter I know better. It’s almost spring.
It’s easy to grow complacent during the foggy dim of a winter month. It’s easy to think that chopping wood is good enough, and that it’s resourceful and plenty. But wintertime will come to an end soon, whether soon is in a month or two, soon is still soon. A mere 60 days from today the ice will be gone, and the water will be open and shimmering and present. Short days after the ice melts back into the form we prefer, the piers will go in, first some and then lots, stacked out from shore in their patterns, H’s and L’s and T’s and I’s. When the piers are in, the canopies follow, then the boats and the people and the laughter and the splashing. Winter feels like its stalls in February, but it is subtly and certainly marching toward its demise. Spring, it’s coming.
I won’t chop wood in the spring. If a branch falls across my driveway, I’ll cut it with my saw and then chop it with my axe, but I would only do this out of necessity and not out of bored desire. I’ll put my axe away on the shelf, and my chainsaw away in my garage, and I’ll move on to better things, to spring things. I’ll think about fixing up my boat, but it’s more likely I’ll just hurriedly drive it to the launch on some spring day that warms too much for me to resist. I’ll watch the piers go in as a person who already knows which pier I care about. I’ll be nervous and anxious. But I’ll be certain as to what my summer will look like. Certain to know that when I’m not working I’ll be fly fishing, and if I’m not fly fishing I’ll be sailing. And if I’m not sailing I’ll be swimming. And if I’m not swimming I’ll be lunching, lakeside. I don’t have to be too nervous and too anxious, because my summer is already set.
This February day finds most doing anything but worrying about summer. There is work to be done, after all. There are kids to be ferried from basketball games and hockey practice, and there are other things to think about and some more to put off. These are all fine things to do during a distracted February, but February should only be distracting if you already know where summer will be, and what it will look like. If you’re summer-insecure, February is a month for discovery, for learning, for weeding through the bad listings in hopes of finding the good. February is a month for doing, for focusing, for realizing that winter ice does not last forever. February is for solving summer deficiencies.
That’s why I’m here in February, and I don’t dare a vacation this month. I vacationed for a week in January, back during that month when procrastination and complacency were understood. Vacationing times are over now, and it’s time we got down to the fun work of making sure your summer of 2015 isn’t as embarrassingly milquetoast as was your summer of 2014. I’m here today, ready to help, ready to steer in the right direction. But if you reach out to me later today, I’ll likely be chopping wood. Because February isn’t forever.