Woodworking Therapy

Woodworking conjures up images of skilled carpentry, saws, miters, routers and such. Like the Yankee Workshop show on PBS. Woodworking is great therapy, one of my doctor clients tells me. For me, the therapy is working in the woods - woodsworking, you could call it. I needed the therapy yesterday. Dad is in the hospital; some difficult decisions loom ahead. After a hospital visit, some hard work in the woods sounded good. Clear the brush, clear the mind.

I decided to tackle a logjam in the stream from a recent torrential rain. I trudged down to the jam with mattock, lopper, and a small chainsaw. It was a gnarly, humid day. The dew point pushed 70. Gnats, mosquitoes, and biting flies were out. I walked the trail, then stepped into the creek bed and scoped out the mess. It was suitably vigorous work. There is little skill required for this woodworking. It is mostly persistent hard, grubby work. Pull out roots, pry out rotten logs, drag smelly muck out of the way. Keep from stepping in water over the top of my otherwise waterproof boots. Cut the tree lying across the stream into sections. Lug the sections across to the bank.

Much of the wood was from a downed osage tree. Osage is very hard wood, about like cutting a concrete block. The wood is bright yellow; it burns like coal in a fireplace. The sawdust piled up on my boots like gold dust. After about 40 minutes, the jam was mostly clear. The pretty rock riffle in the stream was once again visible.

I trudged down towards the waterfall, sweaty and muddy but satisfied at the outcome. I removed a log from the upper table of the falls. I stepped below the falls in the stream. Looking upstream was a beautiful vista - the falls, water flowing towards it, swaying sycamore trees. I took this in then headed for home.

Several plant and animal friends greeted me along the way. A frog jumped from the bank as I left the stream. A rufous-sided towhee hopped just a few feet from me under some black raspberry bushes by the trail. I came across a patch of delicate white lobelia wildflowers. Back at the house, our resident garter snake languidly crawled into the flower bed near the porch. It was as if the residents of Bittersweet Woods were assuring me that whatever lay ahead, things would be OK.



I walked into the yard to the sharp pinging of a sledge hammer striking a splitting wedge. Suz was chopping out the last vestiges of a locust stump which was decidedly mower-unfriendly. We took a few more swings and the stump remnant gave way. Time to clean up and get back to the hospital.