Twelve Quintals Of Wood

Today the Casa Lanzarotti furnace was a picky-eater; it stopped burning four times. Now I sit typing in a down jacket and finger-less gloves.

To make my room cozy, the furnace in the basement heats water that is distributed through pipes in the floors of key rooms. The furnace feeds on wood and apparently, has an appetite. In three weeks, twelve quintals of wood will have been devoured.

What does twelve quintals look like? After moving it all morning, I can tell you: It’s a lot. Gian-Luca keeps the wood supply stocked by partitioning dead trees in the forest. Since he spent the day in Milan (even farmers go to the dentist), collecting the timber was the responsibility of the remaining ladies.

I was picturing wood gathering in the forest like I used to collect for Girl Scout campfires. This was not Troop 501. To start, we assembled make-shift bridges of planks for the river crossing; next, Iris backed the tractor with truck bed attachment to the river’s edge; then we started the gathering.

Wood gathering consisted of hopping on ice covered rocks, sliding across moss covered planks, crossing the river, hiking through the forest, finding lumber, reversing the sequence with cargo in-tote, and heaving said cargo into the truck bed.

I pride myself in sporting a decent amount of physical strength (first mistake; refer to Feb 12 blog posting on eating my words). After unsuccessfully dead-lifting what felt like a tree-trunk (second mistake; refer to dead-lifting a tree-trunk), I humbly went with Iris’ suggestion: “You and Maria pick the light ones, I’ll pick the heavy ones.” With a machete in one hand, Iris wheeled log after log after log, loaded the tractor, dumped the wood, repositioned the tractor, and repeated the process. This continued for the twelve quintals or four truck-beds full of wood.

Iris had Maria and me break several times: for tea, for coffee, and for fresh apple cider. As for Iris’ own unyielding stamina of firewood collection in the forest, it was only interrupted by the intervention of modern technology: the ring of her mobile cell phone.