telling stories...

i started writing a story yesterday
about a girl, a tree, and the sky...

can't wait to see where it takes me.
could be a short story or a novel.

love writing.

now i like piles of wood...

piles of wood did not always conjure up thoughts of
warm fires and hot cocoa on a winter's night.
piles of wood meant work.

it seemed as if every night for an entire winter
years and years ago we were making our
own pile of wood...in the garage...

those dark winter evenings grabbed us as we
dragged our feet outside to meet my dad who stopped by on his way home from work, well, who knows where, to fill the back of his wood-paneled jeep with scraps of 2x4's.
it was our job to unload it,
and my dad was a man of assembly lines.

we'd line up at the back of the car,
our elbows squeezing the sides of our ribcage,
forearms straight forward at a ninety-degree-angle,
palms up...creating a shelf for wood to be piled.

our smoking cold breath burned our lungs,
and the wood made its impression on our arms:
red stripes on the skin,
muscles and joints turning to rubber.

carrying the wood to the garage was a blind act...
we couldn't see where we were stepping,
the crooked sidewalk tripping us here and there,
hoping we didn't drop our load.

we built a huge wall of wood in that garage.
twenty years later,
it's still there.
not a dent in our supply.
strange indeed.

but i guess you could say
we're prepared.

for the first time this fall,
i like the idea of a small wood pile.
just enough to keep you warm through
a couple cold months...maybe three.

{photos by me. october 2009}