Chainsaw Massacre

Painting by Veronique Radelet

It's been said by many more articulate than I that much of modern life is folly. The most obvious illustration is how much leisure time we have, some of which we squander sitting on our butts in front of screens. Be it a television, computer, or cinema screen, it's little difference to the body; all it knows is that it's sitting. And then to make up for all that down time, we drive over to the Y or a gym and sporadically exercise, using various machines that mimic real life, so that our arteries don't clog and cause our hearts to attack us.

Today my husband and I had a taste of what life must have been like before it got so ridiculous, and what it might still be like for those farmers and country folks who literally work for a living. One of our trees was struck by lightning last year, losing a large limb. We thought that was the only damage, but it slowly died over the winter. This spring the truth of the matter was revealed, and the dead tree was quite an eyesore out there on the front lawn, nestled among the living trees surrounding it.

Happy for any excuse to use a chainsaw, Mitch rose to the occasion and chopped the thing down yesterday. Today was the day we had to haul it to the burn pile about 40 yards away, and it was no small task. In fact, it took all afternoon and, in the heat of a summer day, was quite exhausting. Blisters, cuts, bruises, scrapes, chafes, sweating and swearing were involved, although fortunately nobody was decapitated. The end result was a feeling of accomplishment that we would have missed if that tree guy I called a week ago and left a message on his machine but he never called me back had actually called me back. We also have aches and pains in muscles that have been ignored since another tree needed the same treatment a year ago. If more things needed doing around here I could eat a lot more gelato and still stay in shape.